Ex-cop testifies he couldn't see 911 caller's hands when he fatally shot her
A prosecutor attacked a former Minneapolis police officer for his decision to shoot an unarmed woman who approached his squad car, suggesting Friday that he had "no basis" to fire. Prosecutor Amy Sweasy pressed Mohamed Noor to explain why he didn't choose another option before he shot Justine Ruszczyk Damond, who was barefoot and in pajamas, in July 2017, just minutes after Damond called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her house.
Noor said he felt he had no other choice but to shoot to protect his partner in the moments after a "loud bang" on his squad car made him fear a possible ambush. But Sweasy asked Noor why he couldn't have told Damond to step back, tell his partner to drive, or tell his partner to get down.
"I had to make a split-second decision," Noor testified.
Noor's voice often cracked as he testified, CBS Minnesota reported, and he repeatedly referred to Damond as "the threat." But Sweasy questioned why Noor perceived a threat at all, especially after he affirmed he couldn't see the woman's hands or a weapon and that she at one point stepped back.
"Did you just say 'the threat' took a couple steps back?" Sweasy asked, according to CBS Minnesota.
"Yes," Noor said.
Noor's testimony came near the end of the fourth week in his trial on murder and manslaughter charges in the death of Damond, a 40-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia. The death of Damond, a life coach who was engaged to be married a month after the shooting, sparked outrage in both the U.S. and Australia, cost Minneapolis' police chief her job and contributed to the electoral defeat of the city's mayor a few months later.
Noor's testimony Friday lasted barely an hour. It came a day after he took the stand in his own defense and for the first time publicly talked about the night of Damond's death; Noor had refused to talk to investigators since the shooting.
Noor said he didn't fear for his partner's life when he heard the bang, but did afterward when Harrity yelled "Oh Jesus!" and went for his weapon. Noor said Harrity was having difficulty pulling his gun from his holster.
Noor said he pressed his left arm over Harrity's chest, and saw a woman in a pink shirt with blond hair outside Harrity's driver's side window. Noor said the woman raised her right arm before he fired.
"I fired one shot," he said, later adding: "My intent was to stop the threat and save my partner's life."
When he realized he had shot an innocent woman, Noor said, "I felt like my whole world came crashing down."
"I couldn't breathe," said Noor, who described feeling great pain and "paralysis."
He began crying and said that if he had known something like this would happen, "I would never have become a cop."
Noor, 33, was fired after being charged. His attorneys have argued that he was justified in using deadly force to protect himself and partner Matthew Harrity from a perceived threat. Prosecutors have argued there was no reasonable threat, and questioned whether the supposed bang on the squad car was invented.
Noor's attorney, Thomas Plunkett, asked Noor what would have happened if the person approaching the squad car had had a weapon.
"My partner would have been killed," Noor answered.
Neither officer had a body camera running when Damond was shot, something Harrity blamed on what he called a vague policy that didn't require it. The department toughened the policy after Damond's death to require that the cameras be turned on when responding to a call.
Damond was white. Noor is a Somali American whose hiring two years before the shooting was celebrated by Minneapolis leaders as a sign of a diversifying police force in a city with a large population of Somali immigrants.
