The 40-year-old Australian woman had called 911 to report a disturbance in an alley near the home she shared with her fiance. As she walked to the responding officers’ car, reportedly in her pajamas, she was shot by officer Mohamed Noor, one of the city’s newest diversity picks for its police force.
I heard about the story on our local radio station yesterday, but not a word about the shooter, until I read Leo Hohmann’s report at WND last night. Believe it or not, but CNN was reporting the story this morning complete with the officer’s name scrolled below the report. CNN said Officer Noor apologized and said he had her friends and family in his “thoughts and prayers.”
There was no explanation given in the CNN report about why he shot the unarmed woman, or why the officers’ body cameras were turned off.
Here is Hohmann at WND:
The Minneapolis cop who shot and killed a 40-year-old woman after she called 9-1-1 to report a possible crime near her home was identified Monday as the precinct’s first Somali-American officer — Mohamed Noor.
Noor has only been a police officer for two years and has already been sued for alleged unprofessional behavior. The May 2017 lawsuit also involved a female and accusations of brutality.
The shooting late Saturday night happened at the end of an alley in the city’s Fulton neighborhood.
Justine Ruszczyk Damond, a native of Sydney, Australia, was a veterinarian and a yoga instructor who recently got engaged to longtime boyfriend Don Damond. She and her fiancé lived in the 5000 block of Washburn.
[….]
Noor, 31, was born in Somalia.
KSTP, citing a source with direct knowledge of the shooting, reported that Noor was sitting in the passenger seat of the squad car at the time of the shooting and “shot across his partner” at Damond, who approached the officers’ car in her pajamas and began talking to the officer in the driver’s seat.
One of Damond’s friends, who identified herself only by her first name, Hannah, told the Star-Tribune that there was “no way” Damond would have been armed.
“She often talked about how much better it was in Australia, where people aren’t allowed to have guns,” Hannah told the local newspaper.
“This is a very bizarre story,” Debra Anderson, chair of ACT For America’s Minnesota chapter and a resident of Minneapolis. “How could a women in pajamas possibly be perceived as a threat, on the opposite side of the car, no less?”
The story is making headlines around the world.
Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges will have a lot of explaining to do!
Minneapolis has the nation’s largest concentration of Somali refugees, with the community estimated at approximately 50,000 strong in the city. The city’s Democrat mayor and council have made every effort to hire Somalis as part of the city’s diversity program.
Continue here for more information and more photos. I’ve only snipped a tiny bit of a more detailed story. And, surely there will be updates during the day.
For new readers: Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis? Thank Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services (as well as other refugee contractors) placing Somali Muslims there for decades. See my post from 2011 when I first learned how that happened. See yesterday’s post about Catholics and Lutherans placing the largest numbers of refugees into unsuspecting American towns and cities.