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Mohamed Noor, the former Minneapolis police officer who shot dead an unarmed Australian woman after she called 911 to report a disturbance outside her home in 2017, was released from prison on Monday morning.
Noor, 37, shot and killed Justine Ruszczyk Damond on July 15, 2017, after she called 911 to report what she thought was a woman being sexually assaulted outside her home.
Damond approached his patrol car after seeing Noor arrive with his partner. He told a jury that he misperceived her to be a threat, so fired his gun.
Mohamed Noor was released from prison on Monday morning, five years after shooting dead Justine Damond (right) after she called 911
He was initially found guilty of murder and manslaughter and was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years behind bars, however Minnesota’s Supreme Court overturned the murder conviction last October.
Noor was resentenced to five years as a result and on Monday, he was released to serve out the remainder – just over a year – on probation.
The location of his incarceration was kept secret by the Minnesota Department of Corrections which claimed he was at risk of harm.
He was moved from a Minnesota prison to a facility on North Dakota in 2019 for his own safety.
Damond’s family in Australia previously decried the reversal of Noor’s murder conviction.
Last week, anticipating his release from prison on Monday, her father told The Associated Press in a statement: ‘His release after a trivial sentence shows great disrespect to the wishes of the jury who represented the communities of Minneapolis and their wish to make a statement about the communities’ expectations of police behavior and actions.’
Her stepmother said it was ‘disappointing’ and ‘painful’ that he had been released so close to the fifth anniversary of Justine’s death.
‘We’re very disappointed. But we’re not surprised.
‘We’ve been watching events in Minneapolis from miles away and we’re still bewildered about the charge being dropped and we’re still bewildered about the culture of the Minneapolis Police Department,’ she said.
Damond with her American fiance Don, whose last name she had already taken when she died
Noor’s bodycam was not activated during the shooting and his partner’s was only partially activated. The only bodycam footage from the incident was from the other officers who arrived at the scene once she was already dead
Neither Noor nor his partner had their body cameras turned on for the shooting but Noor is shown afterwards, with his head in his hands, while his partner tells him to keep his mouth ‘shut’
Damond had dual Australian and American nationality.
On July 15, she was at home alone when she heard noises outside her home.
‘I can hear someone out the back and I’m not sure if she is having sex or being raped,’ she told the operator.
Noor served three years in total behind bars
There is no bodycam of the actual shooting but there is of what happened next – when Noor’s partner told him to ‘keep his mouth shut’.
Noor was charged with third degree murder which, in Minnesota, includes a stipulation that the defendant must be found to have a ‘depraved mind’.
He was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to 12.5 years in July 2019.
In their appeal, his attorneys seized on that wording to get him out of jail, arguing that he didn’t have a depraved mind or a disregard for life, and had an otherwise stellar record – aside from killing the unarmed woman.
The state Supreme Court agreed and ordered that he should be resentenced.
He was given a 57 month term last October – just shy of five years.
On Monday, he was released after serving two thirds of that 57 month sentence – three years.
He testified at his trial that he thought he was saving his partner’s life and that Damond posed a threat when she appeared at the back of their patrol car.
He claimed she had one arm raised and that it made him fear she was carrying a weapon.
‘My intent was to stop the threat,’ he said, adding that he was trying to protect his partner. He said he made a ‘split second’ decision as a result.
Bodycam footage shows his partner telling him to keep his mouth ‘shut’ in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
Noor, sweating and speechless, then hopped in the back of a police cruiser.
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