Police in Brooklyn Center, Minn., fatally shot a man after a traffic stop on Sunday, sparking clashes at the scene between hundreds of protesters and officers in an area where tensions are running high during the ongoing trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin.
The man’s family identified the victim as Daunte Wright, 20. In the hours after the shooting, protesters clashed with police in riot gear, breaking a cruiser’s windshield as police fired crowd-suppression munitions, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
Police said the shooting happened shortly before 2 p.m. after an officer stopped a car on a traffic violation and found that the driver had an outstanding warrant. As they tried to arrest him, he got back into the car and an officer shot him, Brooklyn Police Center Chief Tim Gannon said in a news release.
The man, who had a female passenger in the car, continued driving for several blocks before he hit another car. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The female passenger suffered injuries that were not considered life-threatening during the crash and was transported to the hospital, police said.
Police have not identified the victim, but Aubrey Wright identified him as his son, Daunte Wright, who is Black. The officer who shot him has not been identified.
Aubrey Wright, 42, said his son had recently asked his mother for $50 to take his car to a carwash, where he was headed when the shooting happened. They had recently bought him a car, his father told The Washington Post.
Wright, who was at the grocery store when his son was shot, said he received a call from his wife about 2 p.m. with the news. “She was screaming over the phone. She was saying, ‘Daunte was shot!’ ” he said.
“This is not a neighborhood where stuff happens like this,” said Aubrey Wright, who said the family lives about three miles from where the shooting happened.
Brooklyn Center is about 10 miles north of downtown Minneapolis, where a criminal trial is underway for Chauvin, the former officer accused of kneeling on George Floyd’s neck before he died last year.