Video of Mohamed Noor pulling his gun on a driver might be shown to murder trial jury
Mohamed Noor was told not to say a word after he shot Australian woman Justine Damond. Now, damning video footage of the killer cop has moved a step closer to being shown to the jury at his murder trial.
Damning video footage of killer cop Mohamed Noor pulling his gun on a driver just weeks before he shot dead unarmed Australian woman Justine Ruszczyk Damond has moved a step closer to being shown to the jury at his murder trial.
While Minneapolis judge Kathryn Quaintance had earlier ruled the “highly, highly prejudicial” dashcam footage was not admissible at Noor’s trial, a series of missteps by his defence prompted her to warn she was considering letting the 16 person jury watch it.
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Ms Damond, 40, was shot dead in July 2017 at the end of an alley behind the home she shared with her American fiance after calling 911 to help a woman who sounded like she may have been sexually assaulted.
Noor, 33, has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges, arguing that he was acting in self defence and thought Ms Damond, who was barefoot in pyjamas and carrying her mobile phone, was armed and staging a “classic ambush” when she approached the squad car being driven by his partner, Officer Mathew Harrity.
Noor fired once from the passenger side across Harrity’s chest, hitting Ms Damond in the stomach and severing her iliac artery. She died minutes later.
Noor has never explained to investigators why he shot Ms Damond, and the court heard more evidence on Friday from some of the first officers on the scene, including one who advised him to “keep his mouth shut”.
Officer Jesse Lopez, who was shown in bodycam footage on Thursday advising Noor not to talk to investigators, yesterday returned to the stand and said he was following procedure.
“Just keep to yourself,” the veteran officer had said, adding Noor didn’t “have to say anything to anybody”, prompting Ms Damond’s family who were seated in the front of the public gallery, to shake their heads and sigh.
Yesterday, he said he was just doing his job.
The previous “bad acts” of rookie cop Noor were stricken as inadmissable last month, along with character evidence both sides had wished to include in their cases at Henepin County Court.
But in dramatic scenes in court on Friday local time, as Noor’s lawyer Peter Wold tried to introduce a performance review of Noor from 2016, Judge Quaintance warned the defence that the damaging footage, in which Noor approached a driver during a daytime stop with his gun
levelled at him, was on the table.
“This review is of limited relevance because it’s nine months before this incident (the shooting of Ms Damond), and seven months before Mr Noor put his gun (to) somebody’s head during a traffic stop,” Judge Quaintance said as she ruled the performance review could not be shown
to the jury.
When prosecutor Patrick Lofton said: “We think the door is open to the traffic stop (evidence) now”, Judge Quaintance said the door was “creaking” open.
As Noor’s lawyer Wold complained, Judge Quaintance said his opinion would matter “when you wear the robes”.
The showdown came during cross examination of Noor’s supervisor, Lieutenant Dan May from the city’s fifth police district.
Under questioning from Noor’s defence counsel Peter Wold, May praised Noor and Harrity’s work as officers, saying that while they were both young and relatively to the force, they had been working “very well”.
Lt May said the pair had impressed him enough to be assigned to a “precinct wide” squad car detail with extra responsibilities, and had been selected for automatic rifle training, which was not given to every officer.
“Obviously you are not going to arm just anyone with those kind of weapons,” Lt May said.
“You have to have judgment.”
He also talked up the concerns American police officers shared at the time of Ms Damond’s death, saying the risk of ambush was regularly discussed at roll call.
It came just 10 days after New York officer Miosotis Familia was shot dead in the Bronx and a year after five officers were killed by a gunman in Dallas.
The veteran officer said that at the time he had recently undergone police ambush training for the first time in his 30 year career.
“It was in a response to the environment that we were working in, and nationally the volume officers being ambushed, shot and killed in many situations,” he said.
Lt May also gave more insight in to how Noor reacted to the shooting.
He said he sat with Noor in a squad car in the hours after and the while he was “extremely upset”, he didn’t talk about his actions.
“I would say he was visibly shaken … in a state of shock,” said Lt May.
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