Daunte Wright’s mother recounts call moments before son’s death

The mother of Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old Black man fatally shot by a police officer during a Sunday traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minn., recounted additional details from her phone call with her son in the moments leading up to the fatal encounter.

Katie Wright, who spoke about the call in earlier interviews, held back tears during a press conference Tuesday afternoon while recalling details of the call. She and other family members spoke alongside civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family.

The mother said she heard officers ask her son to put his phone down. “Daunte asked, ‘For what?’ ” Katie Wright said. “The police officer said, ‘I’ll explain to you when you get out of the car.’ ” 

“Daunte put the phone down and I heard some scuffling, he got out of the car and I could hear the police officers scuffling with him,” she continued, before pausing as she began to cry.

She added that police asked her son to hang up the phone, and that she tried “calling back to back to back.” 

“I didn’t know what was going on and I never imagined this was going to happen. I just thought maybe he was being arrested,” Katie Wright said. 

She said a girl who was in the car with her son eventually answered the phone. 

“It was on FaceTime and … she was crying and screaming and she said that they shot him,” Katie Wright said. “Then she pointed the phone toward the driver’s seat and my son was laying there, unresponsive.”

“That was the last time that I’ve seen my son, that’s the last time I heard from my son and I have had no explanation since then,” she added. 

“That was last time I had seen or heard from my son. I’ve had no explanation since then.” – Katie Wright, Daunte Wright’s mother speaks of her last moments with her son. pic.twitter.com/88hM1zsArF

— BNC (@BNCNews) April 13, 2021

Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, who resigned from his role on Tuesday, previously said that he believed Officer Kim Potter, who has also resigned, intended to deploy her stun gun against Daunte Wright instead of firing her handgun. 

Protests have erupted after Wright’s death. His aunt, Naisha Wright, called for legal action to be taken against Potter. 

“I hope that since she went ahead and she resigned … that they hold her at the highest, at the highest, because she was the law, she was the law, right?” Naisha Wright said during Tuesday’s press conference. “Protect and serve.” 

“Put her in jail, like they would do any one of us,” Wright added. 

‘Great … put her in jail like they would do any one of us’ — Naisha Wright, in response to hearing that the officer who killed her nephew Daunte Wright has resigned pic.twitter.com/95oPUPMq8Y

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 13, 2021

Chyna Whitaker, the mother of Daunte Wright’s 1-year-old son, also spoke at the press conference.

“The last time I seen Dante was when I had dropped my son off with his grandma. And I didn’t know that was gonna be the last time that I was gonna see him,” Whitaker said.

“I just feel like that’s so wrong, because now my son, he don’t have a dad. His dad didn’t get to see him for his second birthday, or for any of his birthdays, and I’m just so messed up about it because, like I feel like they stole my son’s dad from him,” Whitaker added.

Naisha Wright said that Daunte Wright’s father, Aubrey Wright, was in too much pain to speak at Tuesday’s press conference. 

Aubrey Wright told ABC’s Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America” earlier Tuesday that he “cannot accept” that Potter had intended to fire a stun gun instead of her handgun. 

 “I lost my son. He’s never coming back,” he said. “I can’t accept that a mistake — that doesn’t even sound right. This officer has been on the force for 26-plus years. I can’t accept that.” 

Joseph Choi contributed.