on repeat

‘He Was Just Gasping’: Daunte Wright’s Girlfriend Tearfully Recalls His Final Moments

“I replay that image in my head daily,” Alayna Albrecht-Payton said on the stand Thursday.

Alayna Albrecht-Payton, who had just begun dating Daunte Wright when he was killed in April, took the witness stand on Thursday in the trial of Kim Potter, the Minnesota police officer who faces manslaughter charges for Wright’s death. Potter says she meant to use her Taser when she fatally shot Wright during a traffic stop at Brooklyn Center. “He kept asking them what he did,” Albrecht-Payton said, adding that the officers said there were “multiple reasons” for pulling the couple over as they demanded Wright get out of the car.

“It was the air freshener, it was the tabs, it was the warrant,” Albrecht-Payton said through tears, adding that she remembers Wright being scared. “I remember hearing the boom, the bang of the gun,” she recounted, detailing her own efforts to get him to talk to her after he was shot. “He wasn’t answering me. He was just gasping,” she said. “I replay that image in my head daily.” In emotional testimony, Albrecht-Payton apologized to Wright’s mother, Katie, for flashing the phone’s camera over Wright’s lifeless body after the police encounter during a video call with her. “No mom should have to see their son dead on a phone, on a video call,” she said. “I just know that I hurt her by doing that.”

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Zoe Richards

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