The parents of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was killed by a police officer on Sunday during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota are speaking out. 

As Blavity previously reported, the officer who killed Wright allegedly meant to use her Taser but instead fired her handgun, leading Brooklyn Center Police to say the incident was accidental. 

On Sunday after her son’s death, Katie Wright, the 20-year-old's mother, appeared at the site of the incident and addressed a crowd, recalling her last conversation with him.

She said her son called her saying, "Mom, I'm getting pulled over" and "They're asking about insurance."

Katie added that she could hear police telling him to get out of the car and when he asked why, police told him they would tell him once he got out of the vehicle. She also shared that an officer told him to put down his phone and that someone told him not to run.

She explained that Daunte had been pulled over for having air fresheners hanging from his rear-view mirror, which turned into a scuffle.

“I just want people to know that if you get pulled over, make sure you put your hands up and don’t make any sudden moves, and don’t have air fresheners in your car because that’s why he got pulled over,” Katie said to the crowd, according to CBS 4 Minnesota. “And he was only 20 years old and he didn’t deserve to be shot and killed like this. And I don’t want all of this, all of this. I just want my baby home. That’s all I want is I want him to be home. I don’t want everybody out here chanting and screaming, yelling, I just want him home, that’s it.” 

Katie and Aubrey Wright also joined Robin Roberts on Tuesday on Good Morning America, grief-stricken over the loss of their son.  

“I lost my son,” Aubrey, Daunte's father, said in the interview. “He is never coming back. I can’t accept that. A mistake? That doesn’t even sound right.” 


"I can't accept that— a mistake, that doesn't even sound right," he added. "This officer has been on the force for 26 years. I can't accept that." 

When Roberts asked Katie why she thinks the situation escalated and resulted in her son being shot, she said he was "scared." 

“I don’t know. I know my son was scared,” she said, tearfully. “He’s afraid of the police, and I just seen and heard the fear in his voice, but I don’t know why. It should have never, ever escalated the way it did.” 

In regards to what she'd like to be done to the police officer responsible for killing her son, she said she wants justice to be served. 

"I would like to see justice served and her to be held accountable for everything that she's taken from us," Katie said.

To protesters that took to the streets in the aftermath of Daunte's death, his mom extended her gratitude for their efforts to amplify her son's story but pleaded with others that violence is not the answer. 

"Thank you, so much, for the support and standing by us and making sure my son's name has been heard and asking for justice," she added. 

“All the violence, if it keeps going it’s only going to be about the violence. We need it to be about why my son got shot for no reason. We need to make sure it’s about him and not about smashing police cars, because that’s not going to bring my son back,” she said.