Nothing about this story adds up. Every answer just leads to more questions.
Andy Mannix, Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Police officers Matthew Harrity and Mohamed Noor eased their patrol vehicle into the alley of the quiet south Minneapolis neighborhood late Saturday, the squad’s lights off as they responded to a report of a possible assault.
Near the end of the alley, a “loud sound” startled Harrity. A moment later, Justine Damond, the woman who had called 911, approached the driver’s side of the squad car. Suddenly a surprise burst of gunfire blasted past Harrity as Noor fired through the squad’s open window, striking Damond in the abdomen…
That rudimentary account of her death, released Tuesday by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, is based on an interview that Harrity, 25, a one-year veteran of the force, gave to BCA investigators… Noor so far has refused to talk to investigators and there is no indication when or if he might tell his side of the story.
He’s refusing to talk to investigators. Maybe he’s worried about the “backlash.”
Why the hell is Noor refusing to talk? Nothing he can say could possibly make this worse, unless he straight-up murdered her. That hasn’t been my assumption so far, but his silence can only lead to speculation. He needs to explain himself. What the hell happened? What was he thinking?
To give you an idea of what sort of person Justine Damond was, here’s Jared Goyette at the Guardian:
Three weeks before she was shot dead by police [Justine] Damond, a 40-year-old Australian who had changed her surname from Ruszczyk in anticipation of her wedding, climbed into a storm drain and rescued a group of ducklings near her home in Minneapolis by gathering them in the folds of her skirt…
On the video she is shown gathering the ducklings and persuading the mother of the ducklings to walk over the road for a family reunion.
Here’s the video:
What a menace, right? Terrifying.
I don’t know why Mohamed Noor shot this woman, and he’s not talking. But I can’t help but notice that nobody’s rioting or marching or even starting “woke” hashtags about her. I don’t see anybody pointing to this case as a symbol of police misconduct in America. They all seem to accept “There was a loud noise” as an excuse for a cop killing an unarmed woman in her pajamas.
Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin were both killed while physically assaulting somebody, and they’re considered martyrs. Justine Damond was the sort of person who would literally crawl into a storm drain to rescue some baby ducks, and one night she dialed 911 to report a crime, and…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Damond wasn’t a designated victim. Her death doesn’t do anything to help anybody’s political cause. She was expendable.
In 2017 America, her life didn’t matter.
White cop shoots black person: #BlackLivesMatter
Black cop shoots white person: Let's not jump to conclusions pic.twitter.com/T5GA7Qyiy4— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) July 18, 2017