Kim Potter found guilty over killing of Daunte Wright

The jury in the manslaughter trial of former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter, who shot dead 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April 2021, has found her guilty.

The former police officer, who is white, had maintained that she made a tragic mistake when she grabbed her gun, instead of her Taser, and shot Wright, who was Black, when he was pulled over while driving in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center.

But on Thursday the jury found Potter guilty of both of the charges she faced, of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter.

Aubrey Wright began to speak, as if to thank prosecutors, but choked up after two or three words and fell silent.

But demonstrators outside the courthouse, braced for the possibility of yet another acquittal after a fatal police shooting, became celebratory, with a brass band showing up and a man playing When the saints come marching in on a trombone as people danced.

Wright was killed while the trial was going on, in the same Minneapolis of court house where Potter was just convicted, of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who was accused and later convicted of murdering George Floyd in May 2020, sparking the biggest anti-racism uprising in the US since the civil rights movement.