A US white former police officer who shot dead a black motorist in Minnesota has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, prosecutors say.
Kim Potter was arrested and later released on $100, 000 bail.
Police say Potter shot Daunte Wright by accident, having mistakenly drawn her gun instead of her taser.
Responding to the charges, the Wright family’s lawyer Ben Crump said the killing was an “intentional, deliberate, and unlawful use of force”.
Both Potter and police chief Tim Gannon have resigned. The killing has sparked clashes between the police and protesters in Brooklyn Centre – a suburb of Minneapolis – and late on Wednesday, several hundred demonstrators again defied a curfew to gather outside police headquarters.
Protesters threw bottle and other projectiles at police accused of murdering African-American George Floyd.
Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) said Potter was taken into custody on Wednesday morning. She was booked into Hennepin County Jail on probable cause second-degree manslaughter before bail was posted.
According to Minnesota state law, a person a person can be found guilty of second-degree manslaughter if they can be proven to have shown culpable negligence whereby they create an unreasonable risk and “consciously take chances of causing death or great bodily harm” to someone else.
Potter is due to make her first court appearance on Thursday.
