Agent Kim Potter, Brooklyn Center Police Department BRUCE BISPING / STAR TRIBUNE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Kim Potter, the agent who shot and killed Daunte Wright, an unarmed 20-year-old African American, resigned Tuesday from her post at the Brooklyn Center Police Department, a suburb of Minneapolis.
According to the resignation letter, the 46-year-old and 26-year-old police have made the decision "in the best interest of the community."
The local police chief, Tim Gannon, resigned shortly after.
The event last Sunday has resurrected racial protests and riots in the same city where the George Floyd case is being tried, a place already traumatized by police brutality towards African Americans.
"I loved every minute of being a police officer and serving this community to the best of my ability, but I think it is best for the community, the department and my fellow officers if I immediately resign," Potter wrote, according to local media. .
On Sunday afternoon, police stopped Wright's car for wearing an air freshener hanging from his rear view mirror (which is prohibited in the State of Minnesota).
After discovering that the young man had a pending warrant, the agents tried to arrest him, but he resisted and re-entered the vehicle.
Potter pointed a pistol at him and yelled "Taser" three times, in a supposed warning signal that he was going to paralyze him.
However, the agent shot the driver, who traveled several blocks in the car, before dying.
It was a firearm, not a taser.
"Shit, I just shot him," Potter is heard saying in the video recorded with his body camera.
"From what I have seen, the reaction and anguish of the police immediately afterwards, it seems to me that it was an accidental discharge that resulted in the tragic death of Mr. Wright," Gannon said at a news conference.
The father of the murdered young man, Aubrey Wright, said Tuesday on ABC's
Good Morning America
program
that he rejects the hypothesis of the now former police chief.
“I lost my son.
It will never come back.
I can't accept that.
A mistake?
That doesn't even sound good.
This agent has been in the Police for 26 years.
I can't accept that, ”he replied.
Police had put Potter on administrative leave on Monday.
However, the pressures to fire her were growing.
After two nights of protests outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department, where officers ended up firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters and looters, the town's mayor, Mike Elliott, added to the pressure.
"Whenever, in the line of duty, someone kills another human being, there must be responsibility," he said Tuesday morning on the
Today
program
.
Elliott, the city's first black mayor, announced Monday night that the City Council voted to give the City “command authority” over the police force.