Hundreds of mourners gather for funeral of Daunte Wright who was shot dead by police
Friends and family of Daunte Wright, the young black man shot by police during a traffic stop in Minneapolis, have remembered him at his funeral on Thursday.
It comes at a poignant time in the US as the country confronts a national reckoning on racism and policing after former police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder and manslaughter of George Floyd.
Hundreds of mourners gathered to mourn Wright - a 20-year-old father of one.
"The roles should be completely reversed. My son should be burying me," Daunte’s mother, Katie Wright, said before burying her hands in her face in her hands.
"He was so happy and so proud, and he said he couldn’t wait to make his son proud. Junior was the joy of his life. He lived for him every single day," she said.
Earlier, Ben Crump, attorney for both the Floyd and Wright families, asked attendees to stand and repeat the proclamation: "Daunte Wright’s life mattered."
Many in the congregation raised their fist.
Crump and Wright's family have called for more serious charges against Kim Potter, the white officer who is charged with manslaughter in Wright’s death.
Potter’s police chief said he believed the officer, who has since resigned, meant to pull her Taser - but Potter should not have pulled any weapon, Crump said.
"At some point Daunte Jr. is going to get old enough to watch that video of how his father was slain so unnecessarily. A misdemeanour, a misdemeanour," Crump said.
"It’s too often the traffic stops end up as deadly sentences, a death sentence. We’re going to have to make sure that Daunte Jr. know that we stood up for Daunte, his father."
The families of several other Black people killed by police attended Wright’s funeral.
The mothers of Philando Castile, who died after being shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb in 2016, and Eric Garner, who was filmed saying "I can’t breathe" in a fatal 2014 encounter with New York City police, were both present.
Also attending was the family of Oscar Grant, a black man killed in 2009 by a California transit officer who mistook his service weapon for a stun gun.
Relatives of Emmett Till, the teenager whose 1955 lynching in Mississippi helped spark the Civil Rights Movement, were also in attendance.
US Senator Amy Klobuchar, Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey were also at the service.
Wright's life was remembered in song, portrait, and art at the service.
The Reverend Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader, was to deliver the eulogy, and said that he would first pay tribute to Wright, "a young man just at the beginning of life, full of life."
He said he would also use his remarks to remind those in attendance or watching from afar that the fight for justice didn’t end when Chauvin was convicted.
"We should not think that, because we won one battle with Chauvin, the war is over, or that if we do not get justice for this case, that we will undo what we were able to do with George Floyd," Sharpton said.
Wright's killing set off protests in the state - with hundreds of people gathering every night for a week outside the city’s heavily guarded police station.
While the mayor called for law enforcement and protesters to scale back, the nights often ended with demonstrators lobbing water bottles and rocks at the officers - and law enforcement responding with pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets.
The police chief said it appeared from body camera video that the officer who shot Wright used her pistol when she meant to use her Taser.
The white officer, 26-year veteran Kim Potter, is charged with second-degree manslaughter. Both she and the chief resigned soon after the shooting.