Body cam footage released Monday in the death of Daunte Wright, 20, a Black man who died after being shot by police during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb appears to show that the cop meant to grab her taser instead of her firearm.
The city's police chief Tim Gannon called it an accidental discharge.
In body camera footage of the incident, a police officer can be heard saying: "Holy s---. I just shot him."
The officer, whom Gannon called a senior officer, has been put on administrative leave pending an investigation, Gannon said.
The shooting sparking violent protests that lasted into Monday as officers in riot gear clashed with demonstrators and the man’s mother called for calm, according to the Associated Press.
Wright's death on Sunday came during the fraught time surrounding ex-cop Derek Chauvin's trial in the death of unarmed Black man George Floyd.
The judge in that case refused Monday to sequester the jury after a defense attorney argued that the panel could be influenced by the prospect of what might happen as a result of their verdict.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz tweeted that he was praying for Wright’s family “as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement.”
Speaking before the unrest, Wright’s mother Katie Wright, urged protesters to stay peaceful and focused on the loss of her son, per the AP.
“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,” she said to a crowd near the shooting scene in Brooklyn Center, a city of about 30,000 people on the northwest border of Minneapolis. “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.”