“It’s nothing I’ve seen before,” she said, weeping, recalling the officer reaching into the car to grab the 20-year-old Black father during the April encounter.
“We are struggling. We’re trying to keep him from driving away. It just went chaotic. I remember yelling — ‘Taser, Taser, Taser’ — and nothing happened. And then he told me I shot him,” she said, crying and placing her hands over her face.
It was the first time the 26-year veteran cop has recounted publicly in detail what happened that day.
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Erin Eldridge, Potter said Wright had not threatened the officers.
“You never saw a gun?” Eldridge asked.
“No,” Potter said.
He never threw a punch right?
No.
He never kicked anyone?
No.
He never said, I’m going to kill you?
No.
He never said, I’m going to shoot you?
No.
He never said, There’s a gun in the car and I’m coming after you?
No.
Eldridge later played video of the moments before the shooting.
“You have the firearm in your right hand, correct?” the prosecutor asked Potter.
“Yes,” the ex-cop said, starting to cry again.
“And you are pointing it directly at Mr. Wright, correct?”
Potter broke down. Defense attorney Earl Gray requested a break. The judge halted the proceedings for lunch.
The state, which rested its case Thursday, presented more than two dozen witnesses over six days, including a policing expert who testified that Potter, who is White, was not justified in using deadly force when she fatally shot Wright.
Potter on Friday described how a seemingly routine stop unraveled when Wright was told he was under arrest for an outstanding weapons warrant. Potter could not recall what she said after pulling the trigger, she testified.
She resigned from the force days later.
“There was so much bad things happening,” Potter testified, referring to the unrest that followed the shooting. “I didn’t want my coworkers … I didn’t want anything bad to happen to the city.”
Her Taser was a new model, Potter testified
Minutes before…
Source : cnn
