Former cop gets 12 1/2 years for killing unarmed woman
A former Minneapolis police officer was sentenced Friday to 12 1/2 years for the fatal shooting of an unarmed woman who had called 911. A jury convicted Mohamed Noor in April of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the July 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond.
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.
“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.”
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.
Damond’s fiance Don Damond told CBS News last month he wants police to learn from the case. “I would like the Minneapolis Police Department to go back and consider how officers are trained,” he 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.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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