MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ‐ After three weeks of testimony, a jury needed little more than a day to convict a black Minneapolis police officer of murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed white woman who had called 911 to report a possible crime, delivering a guilty verdict that immediately sparked questions about whether race played a role.
Mohamed Noor was also convicted Tuesday of manslaughter in the July 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond , a 40-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia whose death bewildered and angered people in both countries.
Noor, 33, testified that he and his partner heard a loud bang on their squad car that startled them, and that he fired "to stop the threat" after he saw a woman appear at his partner’s window raising her arm. Prosecutors questioned whether the bang happened and attacked Noor for not seeing a weapon or Damond’s hands before he fired.
It’s rare for police officers to be convicted after asserting they fired in a life-or-death situation, but some Minnesota community members said they saw it coming for Noor because he is Somali American.
"Officer Noor was going to jail no matter what because he’s a black man who shot a white woman in the state of Minnesota," said John Thompson, an activist and friend of Philando Castile, a black man who was killed in 2016 by a Latino suburban police officer who was acquitted.
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