Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright in April 2021 in Minnesota, will be released from prison next week. As previously reported by REVOLT, the trained law enforcement official who spent 26 years as a cop said she mistook her gun for a TASER during a traffic stop.
In September 2021, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison added first-degree manslaughter to her previously filed charges related to Wright’s passing. Prosecutors cited “reckless handling or use of a firearm so as to endanger the safety of another with such force and violence that death or great bodily harm to any person was reasonably foreseeable” for the amendment. Since then, Potter has spent 16 months as an inmate at the Shakopee Minnesota Correctional Facility.
Yesterday (April 20), Fox News revealed Potter will spend the next eight months on supervised release as she’s expected to be freed from the facility next week. Wright was only 20 years old when her apparent mistake ended his life. At the time of the incident, Potter pulled the young Black man over for expired license tags in Brooklyn Center. Ironically, this fatal tragedy occurred approximately 15 miles from where George Floyd was also killed by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. Both deaths prompted massive protests.
A jury convicted Potter of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. The latter can carry six to eight years in prison, but the former cop will be home in under two. While in court for sentencing, Potter previously apologized to the victim’s grieving loved ones. “To the family of Daunte Wright, I am so sorry that I brought the death of your son, father, brother, uncle, grandson, nephew,” she began. Then, facing his mother, added, “Katie, I understand a mother’s love, and I am sorry I broke your heart. My heart is broken for all of you.”