*Something rare has happened to a police officer who has killed an unarmed citizen. He was convicted and sentenced to 12/12 years behind bars. Oh, did we tell you the cop was black and victim was a white woman from Australia?
The cop or should we say more accurately, the ex-cop is Mohamed Noor. Actually a Minneapolis jury convicted him in April of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the July 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. His sentencing was today.
Tragically, Noor shot Damond when she approached his squad car in the alley behind her home. Damond, a 40-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Australia, was engaged to be married a month after the shooting.
At his senting hearing earlier today, Noor, filled with emotion and his voice breaking, spoke about the shooting. He said he was horrified when he saw Damond’s body on the ground, repports CBS News.
“I knew in an instant I was wrong,” he said. He said the shooting “leaves me numb, and feeling incredibly lonely. But none of that, none of those words capture what it truly feels like.”
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Noor said he can’t apologize enough “for taking the life of a perfect person.” He called the shooting a tragedy.
Noor’s lawyers had argued for a light sentence, saying sending him to prison would only compound the tragedy and leave him unable to make amends for killing Damond. But Judge Kathryn Quaintance sentenced the 33-year-old Noor to the identical sentence recommended under state guidelines.
Last month Justine Ruszczyk Damond’s fiance, Don Damond, said he wants police to learn from the case.
“I would like the Minneapolis Police Department to go back and consider how officers are trained,” Damond told CBS News correspondent Jamie Yuccas. “I can understand where Black Lives Matter is so angry because you can see the unjustified shooting across this nation, but this is a blue issue.”
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