On April 11, a Minneapolis police officer shot and killed Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop.
When he was killed, officers were attempting to place Wright in custody for an outstanding warrant when officer Kim Potter mistook her gun for a taser, killing the 20-year-old. Following the incident, Kim Potter and Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Garron resigned.
Since the killing, Potter has been charged with second-degree manslaughter.
Wright’s death came in the midst of the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin. Sometime after Wright’s killing, an unlikely connection between Floyd and Wright was made— it turns out that Floyd’s girlfriend had been Wright’s former teacher. This uncanny connection reveals how police brutality and negligence has plagued the Black community to such a degree that it has become cyclical and the families and friends of victims are constantly re-traumatized..
“The craziest thing is to find out today that my family has connections to this man, to this family. His girlfriend was a teacher for my nephew. My nephew was a lovable young man. His smile, oh lord, the most beautiful smile. Ya’ll took that,” said Naisha Wright.
A similar connection was also revealed this week after the announcement of a lawsuit that pertained to another traffic stop gone wrong.
Last December, 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario, a Black and Latino man, was pulled over by two police officers, Daniel Crocker and Joe Gutierrez, for a traffic stop in Windsor, Virginia. The police believed that Nazario was missing a license plate on his new vehicle. During the stop, he was pepper-sprayed and pushed to the ground while officers held him at gunpoint.
Due to his excessive use of force, Guiterrez was fired, following an investigation of the incident; however, Crocker remains employed by the police department.
Following the release of the body camera footage, it was announced that Nazario was not the first victim of police brutality in his family. Gwenn Carr, Eric Garner’s mother, revealed that she and Nazario had been related.
“This is happening again, you know. First to my cousin, then to my nephew,” Carr’s niece said, according to CNN.
