Why? The Senseless Killing Of Justine Damond

The Aussie meditation coach was inexplicably shot by a US cop weeks before her wedding. Nick Bryant looks into what happened that night in Minneapolis and asks why US police shootings are so routine.

Late Saturday night. A distressing noise coming from the back alley. It sounded like a woman was being raped. Alone in her home, Justine Damond phoned her fiancé, Don, a casino manager she had first met on a meditation retreat and who was spending the weekend in Las Vegas. Many of their recent chats had focused on their upcoming wedding in Hawaii, a place they had got to know while carrying on their long-distance relationship, Justine from Sydney and Don in Minneapolis. This, however, was an emergency and Don urged her to phone 911. Alerting the police was the sensible – the safe – thing to do.

Justine, a sunny 40-year-old who had already taken her fiancé’s name and now lived in America, often greeted people with a cheery “Hello beautiful”. Yet when she called the police at 11.27pm she got straight to the point. “Hi, I’m, I can hear someone out back and I, I’m not sure if she’s having sex or being raped.” The woman, she thought, had just yelled “Help!”. The police operator assured her officers were already on the way.