Daunte Wright’s parents reject claim cop shot their son by mistake: ‘I can’t accept that’

The parents of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop near Minneapolis on Sunday, are rejecting the claim their son’s homicide was a mistake.

“I cannot accept that. I lost my son. He’s never coming back. I can’t accept that — a mistake? That doesn’t even sound right,” Daunte’s dad, Aubrey Wright, said Tuesday on “Good Morning America.”

“This officer has been on the force for 26 years. I can’t accept that,” he said, referring to Kim Potter, the cop who fired a single bullet into Daunte’s chest.

“I would like to see justice served and her held accountable for everything that she’s taken from us,” mom Katie Wright told “GMA” host Robin Roberts.

The parents spoke out after the police chief in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center said Monday he believes Potter mistook her gun for her Taser. He called the shooting an apparent “accidental discharge.”

Both the chief and the Potter resigned Tuesday.

In a brief clip of Potter’s body cam video released Monday, a fellow officer is seen trying to handcuff Wright after the traffic stop turned up a warrant for his arrest related to a misdemeanor gun charge.

Potter is seen aiming her gun at Wright and shouting, “Taser! Taser! Taser!” as Wright tries to get back into his vehicle. She then fires once and says, “S--t, I just shot him.”

Daunte’s mother told “GMA” her son was afraid of police.

His death followed less than a year after police in nearby Minneapolis placed George Floyd in handcuffs and then pushed him facedown on the pavement until he stopped breathing.

Fired officer Derek Chauvin, seen on graphic bystander video kneeling on Floyd’s neck as the Black man repeatedly begged for air and called out for his dead mother, is now on trial in Minneapolis for second-degree murder in the case.

And in 2016, in the neighboring suburb of Falcon Heights, police fatally shot Black motorist Philando Castile during what started as a routine traffic stop. The Minnesota public school employee was killed after he tried to explain he had a valid concealed carry permit for his weapon in the car.

Katie Wright said Tuesday her son called her when he got pulled over.

“I know my son was scared. He’s afraid of the police, and I just seen and heard the fear in his voice,” she said. “It should have never escalated the way it did.”

She recalled her son’s “big heart” and “bright smile,” and said his 2-year-old son will now grow up without a father.

“He just had his whole life taken away from him,” she said of Daunte. “We had our hearts pulled out of our chests. He was my baby.”

Appearing at a news conference with lawyer Benjamin Crump on Tuesday afternoon, Katie Wright said the last time she saw her son was when his friend answered her FaceTime call and showed her Daunte’s lifeless body in the front seat of the car.

“That’s the last time that I’ve seen my son. That’s the last time I heard from my son, and I have had no explanation since then,” she said through tears.

“They stole my son’s dad from him,” Chyna Whitaker, the mother of Daunte Wright’s nearly 2-year-old son, said at the news conference.