Massive protests & riots engulf US’s Minnesota after a 20-year-old black man was shot dead by Police | WATCH

Protests broke out in the US state of Minnesota on Sunday after police fatally shot an African-American man at a traffic stop. The incident occurred just 10 miles (16 kilometres) from a courtroom in nearby Minneapolis where a former police officer is on trial for killing George Floyd.

According to Wright’s mother, she was on the phone with him when he was asked to stop by the police. “He said they pulled him over because he had air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror,” she was quoted as saying. The police had questions about the vehicle insurance too.

The mother reportedly heard her son put the phone down or drop it when he was asked to step out of the car by the police. She then heard an officer say, “Daunte, don’t run.”

Wright’s girlfriend, who was in the car with him, informed his mother shortly after their conversation that he had been shot.

The police officer who killed a man in a Minneapolis suburb on Sunday did so accidentally, officials said Monday, releasing a graphic body-camera video that appeared to depict the officer shouting, “Taser!” before firing her gun.

“It is my belief that the officer had the intention to deploy their Taser, but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet,” Chief Tim Gannon of the Brooklyn Center Police Department said of the shooting on Sunday of Daunte Wright, 20, during a traffic stop. “This appears to me, from what I viewed, and the officer’s reaction and distress immediately after, that this was an accidental discharge that resulted in a tragic death of Mr. Wright.”

Shortly after the shooting, demonstrators began to gather, with some jumping atop police cars. Marchers also descended on the Brooklyn Center Police Department, where rocks and other objects were thrown at officers, authorities said.

Several shops were also looted by these protesters including Walmart, GameStop store and the Brooklyn community centre near the shooting stop.