Justine Damond trial: Minneapolis court reveals last words to Don Damond
The fiance of Australian woman Justine Damond has given a harrowing account of the moment he learnt she had been shot dead by a Minneapolis police officer.
The fiance of Australian life coach Justine Ruczszyk Damond has detailed in harrowing testimony how he learnt she had been shot dead by a Minneapolis police officer after calling 911.
Don Damond broke down several times as he described their last conversation, and his regret at telling her to call police for help, after she heard what she thought was a woman being assaulted behind their home.
The court was also shown a transcript of the couple’s last messages to each other, starting with emojis of love hearts and angels and ending with his desperate, repeated phone calls and texts to her.
Damond cried and took several deep breaths to steady himself as he answered prosecutor Amy Sweasey’s questions about what happened on the night of July 15, 2017.
A senior executive with an entertainment company, Mr Damond was in Las Vegas for business that weekend. It was late Saturday night, and Ms Damond had just finished a big work project and treated herself with a night at home relaxing.
At 10.04pm, she texted her fiancé, saying: “Night!”
“Night!! XO!!” Mr Damond replied.
The pair then traded emojis including an angel, upside down smiley face and kissing faces.
At 11.24pm, Mr Damond looked at his phone during a meeting in a Vegas club and saw he had missed two phonecalls from Ms Damond, prompting him to text: “Hi baby, everything ok? Oily (their code for Oh I love You)”.
Five minutes later, Ms Damond called her fiancé tell him she was worried about what she could hear outside.
“I stepped out from this meeting we were having and wanted to find out what was going on. She expressed that she was hearing some noises,” Mr Damond said.
Ms Damond said: “It’s really weird but it sounds like she could be enjoying it, but it also sounds like she could be distressed.”
Mr Damond said the pair spoke for close to a minute, before he urged her to call the police for help.
“I asked her to call the police at that time, just to have them come take a look at it,” he said.
“I said I think you should call police, and I think you should stay put.”
Five minutes later, Ms Damond texted: “Called 911 they on the way.”
“Ok, keep me updated,” Mr Damond said at 11.31pm.
Six minutes later, as she was waiting for officers to arrive, the pair spoke for another minute and 41 seconds, at the end of which she said “Ok, the police are here”.
They didn’t speak again, and the transcript showed in court revealed Mr Damond repeatedly messaging and calling to find out what was going one, saying: “Hello?” in one message, and “Let me know what is happening”, in another.
It wasn’t until about 2am that Mr Damond said he received another call, from a Minneapolis police officer telling him Ms Damond had been killed.
Mr Damond again broke down as he recalled the conversation, him expressing his disbelief and shock while walking around the casino foyer trying to get strong enough reception to hear what the officer was saying.
“I didn’t believe it, I was like what do mean? What are you talking about,” Mr Damond said.
Damond’s last moments have been played out in dramatic scenes in court today as opening statements were made in the murder trial of her killer, former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor.
Damond, 40, had called 911 for help after hearing what sounded like a woman being attacked in the lane behind her home.
However, the defence’s Peter Wold started off terribly, drawing gasps from the public gallery, when he opened by refering to to the victims as “Janine”. He did not repeat the mistake.
Minneapolis prosecutor Patrick Lofton opened the state case by arguing that “you should be able to ask the police for help and feel safe”.
“‘OK, the police are here’. These are the last words that Justine Ruszczyk ever spoke to her fiance Don Damond,” Mr Lofton told the court.
“He was out of town for work and she was inside their home on the phone.”
Minutes later, as she saw the police car pass, Damond “went outside to talk to them”.
“One minute and 19 seconds later, she said the words ‘I’m dying’,” Mr Lofton said.
“As she said those words she was standing outside the officers’ conspicuously marked Minneapolis squad car cradling a gunshot wound to her abdomen and bleeding.”
The shooting happened on a Saturday night in “by far and away Minneapolis’s lowest crime area”.
Mr Lofton said Noor had “taken aim” and shot Damond deliberately, to the shock of his partner, Matthew Harrity, who was driving the pair’s squad car.
“He shot her through an open drivers side window of that car. He fired that shot without saying a word,” Mr Lofton said.
Prosecutors were critical of the initial investigation into the shooting, saying that attending officers appeared to be trying to find a reason for Noor to have fired and that they appeared to be trying to create a cover-up by selectively using their body cameras to interview the two officers.
In his first interview with attending police officers, Mr Harrity seemed to indicate the pair was frightened.
“She just spoo ... (the word was not finished, according to the transcript) ... come up on us ... one shot,” Harrity said, according to audio captured on the officer’s body camera.
“Let’s try to work up a suspect,” the attending officer replied.
“No, our shots fired,” Mr Harrity responded.
The first interview with Noor was not recorded, the court hearing that the officer had turned off their body camera.
The court heard attending officers seemed to be trying to find a reason for Noor’s actions.
“Well something must have spooked them,” one attending investigator said to another, according to a transcript read by Mr Lofton.
“Maybe something came into contact with the sqad?”, the other replied.
“Well maybe she slapped the squad,” said the initial officer.
In a second interview with Mr Harrity, he was more clear that the pair heard a sound that frightened them.
“We pulled up here, we were about ready to just leave and go to another call,” Mr Harrity said in his second interview.
“She just came up out of nowhere on the side of the thing and we both got spooked.
“I had my gun out, I didn’t fire and then Noor pulled out and fired.”
Mr Lofton said Noor’s “state of mind” on July 15, 2017, was an important factor, with the most recent call he and Mr Harrity having taken being reports of a homeless woman wandering the streets close to the Damonds home.
“As they pulled into that alley it was dark, they turned off all the lights in their squad then rolled down their windows and they pulled their guns out,” Mr Lofton said, adding that the pair did nothing to search for the source of the 911 call.
Noor, 33, is on trial for second degree murder and manslaughter.
Noor’s defence argued that the rookie officer had been acting in self defence because he felt he and Mr Harrity were being ambushed, which was something “in the back of the minds of most police officers”.
Judge Kathryn Quaintance admonished Mr Wold for repeatedly invoking other police shootings, saying: “We’re not here for the headlines. Talk about the evidence in the case and what the evidence will show”.
Mr Wold paid tribute to Damond, describing her as a “wonderful woman”.
He said she was: “In all respects a remarkable human being. She did not deserve this. Her death has left huge gaps in the life of many.”
“Mohamed Noor has been heartbroken for Justine Ruszczyk and her family from the moment he realised she was not the threat he reasonably considered her on that night,” Mr Wold said.
But he said his client had been terrified, and using his police training, had responded with reasonable force.
Acting out the “fateful seconds” inside Noor and Mr Harrity’s squad car, Mr Wold said the pair were getting ready to leave the call after finding no evidence of a crime and that Noor had just radioed that the pair was safe, shortly before 11.40pm.
It was silent in the dark alley behind Damond’s home and as they noticed a bike rider nearby, they could hear a dog whining.
“Then bang on the back the squad ... in the stark silence, that loud thump on the back that car,” Mr Wold said.
“And it’s those split seconds that this case is all about.”
Mr Wold said it was a “classic ambush situation” and Noor responded appropriately.
“He sees his frightened partner trying and looking and then sees him jump and yells “oh Jesus”.
“(Harrity was) struggling to undo his weapon then this figure instantly appears in his window, raising a right arm.
“What happens next was immediate. It was a perfect storm with tragic consequences.”
He said that Noor felt that: “Clearly in Harrity’s mind it was an ambush”.
“The evidence will show that this young man is a very decent person. Sometimes your job has negative and unwanted consequences and that is exactly what happened in that narrow and dark alley in the split seconds of that night.”
Prosecutor Sweasey said there were no fingerprints or any other forensic evidence to support the claim that Damond had slapped or otherwise struck the back of the police squad car.
Damond’s Sydney family have travelled to Minneapolis for the trial and are sitting in the front row of the courtroom, next to Noor’s father, mother and wife.
JUSTINE’S FINAL TEXTS
This is a transcript from Justine’s gold iPhone, detailing the last interaction she had with fiance Don Damond on the night she was killed on July 15, 2017. All times in are in Minneapolis local time.
10.04pm: Text from Justine to Don “Night!”
10.04.33: Text from Don to Justine “Night!! XO!!”
10.04: Justine sends two texts with emojis of a face blowing kisses,
an upside down smile and angels
10.06: Text from Justine to Don “I love you”.
11.23: Two missed calls from Justine to Don.
11.24.02: Text from Don to Justine: “Hi baby, everything ok? OILY
(their code for Oh I love You)”.
11.24.25: Call from Justine to Don for 58 seconds.
11.29.01: Text from Justine to Don “Called 911 they on the way”.
11.31.20: Text from Don to Justine “Ok, keep me updated”.
11.37.29: Call from Justine to Don for one minute, 41 seconds which
she ended saying, “Ok, the police are here”.
11.47pm: Text from Don to Justine “Let me know what is happening”.
1.01am: Don calls Justine from a colleague’s phone several times to
check on her and tell her his phone is temporarily out of charge.
Leaves a message when she doesn’t answer.
1.53: Don calls Justine from his own phone, now recharged, leaves a
message when she doesn’t answer.
2.26: Text from Don to Justine “Hello?”
3.22: Call from Don to Justine, no answer.
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