The aunt of Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by a police officer at a traffic stop in Minnesota earlier this month, called him a “shining light” and asked, “Why do we have to keep burying our babies?” in an emotional new interview.
“Daunte was a shining light. He was a shining light. He was loved. He was a man in the making. He was somebody. He was human. He died … we can’t understand why. Why? Why did he have to die the way that he died? My family have to still come to grips with that,” Naisha Wright told CNN on Thursday ahead of Daunte Wright’s funeral in Minneapolis.
“It’s not just my family in America because the color of our skin. Our men, our young men, they’re being murdered, and it’s sad we can’t figure out why. We are such loving people. We are so loving. The Black community is very accepting, and we accept all. But to keep having our nephews, our sons, our fathers, our brothers and stuff taken from us for no reason at all. It’s hard,” she continued, adding that her nephew is being buried on her mother’s 66th birthday on Thursday.
Wright was killed earlier this month during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minn. Former Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, who resigned several days after the shooting, previously said that the officer who shot Daunte Wright, Kim Potter, appeared to have meant to use a Taser on the man, but shot him instead.
Asked what accountability looks like in Daunte Wright’s death, Naisha Wright said her family hopes for “some type of justice” and that “we can get something where other families don’t have to go through this.”
“No family should have to go through this again. No family, and that’s what we want. We want to make sure that other families don’t have to go through this,” she said. “Come on. Why do we have to keep going through burying our babies?”
Naisha Wright rejected the explanation that Potter mistakenly used her gun, saying “we all know the difference.”
Wright’s funeral is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Minneapolis.
His burial comes two days after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty in a Minneapolis court of all charges in the murder of George Floyd, whose death last May led to nationwide demonstrations against police brutality.