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UPDATE 1-Family of Australian woman killed by Minneapolis police hires lawyer

Published 21/07/2017, 05:09 am
Updated 21/07/2017, 05:10 am
© Reuters.  UPDATE 1-Family of Australian woman killed by Minneapolis police hires lawyer

© Reuters. UPDATE 1-Family of Australian woman killed by Minneapolis police hires lawyer

(Rewrites with confirmation lawyer hired by woman's family)

By Todd Melby

MINNEAPOLIS, July 20 (Reuters) - The family of an Australian woman fatally shot by a Minneapolis police officer has hired an attorney who represented another police shooting victim in Minnesota, the lawyer said on Thursday.

The lawyer, Bob Bennett, reached a nearly $3 million settlement in June for the family of black motorist Philando Castile from the St. Paul, Minnesota, suburb of St. Anthony. Castile was shot and killed in July 2016 during a traffic stop. death of Justine Damond, 40, from a single gunshot wound to the abdomen fired through an open window of a police patrol car, has outraged her relatives and the public in both Australia and the United States. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called it "shocking" and "inexplicable." who was unarmed, had called police about a possible sexual assault in her neighborhood just before midnight on Saturday. There is no known video footage of the shooting. The body cameras were inactive for both police officers in the patrol car, investigators said. criticized the Minneapolis police.

"Usually people who call the police in their pajamas are not ambushers, especially spiritual healers and pacifists," Bennett said in a telephone interview of the woman who owned a meditation and life-coaching company.

"You shouldn't shoot unarmed people who call the cops," Bennett said.

He said Damond's family had not yet made funeral arrangements but her body was still at the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office.

Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor, who fired the shot that killed Damond, has refused to be interviewed by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating the shooting. His attorney released a statement in which Noor expressed condolences to the Damond family, but declined to discuss the shooting.

Damond's death, the third at the hands of a Minnesota police officer in less than two years, also prompted comments by Michele Bachmann, a former Republican presidential candidate and U.S. representative from Minnesota.

Bachmann, speaking at a Republican hog roast in Waconia, Minnesota, on Wednesday, called Noor an "affirmative-action hire by the hijab-wearing mayor of Minneapolis," the Star Tribune reported. Noor is Somali-American.

However, Noor's ethnicity is irrelevant, said Abdirizak Bihi, director of the Somali Education and Social Advocacy Center in Minneapolis.

"This is racism. It's shifting responsibility to a small, marginalized community rather than the city being responsible," Bihi said.

The officer who shot Castile was acquitted in a manslaughter trial in June.

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