BROOKLYN CENTER, MN - APRIL 13: Protesters march from the Brooklyn Center police headquarters to a nearby FBI office on April 13, 2021 in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Demonstrations have become a daily occurrence since Daunte Wright, 20, was shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter on Sunday. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Opinion

WALSH: Daunte Wright Was Wanted For Robbing And Choking A Woman At Gunpoint. Here’s Why That Matters.

DailyWire.com

One of the very first men canonized by the high priests of the church of BLM was Michael Brown. Described in media reports as a “gentle giant,” and hailed as a promising young man and valuable member of his community, Brown died while assaulting a police officer and trying to take his gun. George Floyd, whose death at the hands of police is being adjudicated as we speak, died while resisting arrest and high on a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl. His rap sheet included the home invasion armed robbery of a woman. Another canonized (though still living) saint, Jacob Blake — a man who received ceremonial visits from Joe Biden and other Democratic dignitaries while in the hospital — allegedly broke into a woman’s house and raped her in her bedroom before stealing her debit card and vehicle. On the day of the shooting, Blake had returned to the home of his alleged victim and was attempting to take her car keys. When the police arrived, he fought them, pulled a knife, and eventually was shot.

That brings us to Daunte Wright, the latest posthumously appointed martyr for BLM. The immediate circumstances of his death are well known: He was pulled over for a traffic violation, police discovered that he had an open warrant, they tried to make the arrest, he resisted, climbed back into his vehicle, and was shot by a female officer who says that she meant to use her taser. She has been charged with manslaughter in his death.

Now, after a Daily Mail report on Tuesday, more pieces of the puzzle have been revealed. The Mail reports:

Daunte Wright choked a woman and threatened to shoot her if she did not hand over $820 she had stuffed in her bra, court papers obtained by DailyMail.com allege. That is the case that led to a warrant for his arrest at the time he was shot and killed by police officer Kimberly Potter in Minnesota on Sunday, leading to days of unrest… Wright was allegedly pulled over for having expired license plate tags, although he called his mother and told her it was for having an air freshener hanging on his rear-view mirror. While checking his details, Potter and other officers learned of the warrant.

The full details of the alleged crime are quite chilling. In December of 2019, Wright and another man, Emajay Driver, stayed the night in a house shared by two female roommates. The Daily Mail explains what allegedly happened the next morning:

In the morning, one of the women went to the bank to get her $820 rent money which she gave to the other woman and then left for work. As Wright, Driver and the second woman were leaving, Wright allegedly tried to hold up the woman.

‘The three of them were walking to the door to exit the apartment and defendant Wright turned around and blocked the door preventing victim from leaving,’ says the report, written by Osseo Police Officer Shane Mikkelson. Defendant Wright then pulled a black handgun with silver trim out from either his right waistband or his right coat pocket and pointed it at victim and demanded the rent money,’ continued Mikkelson.

‘Victim said “Are you serious?” Defendant Wright replied: “Give me the f**king money, I know you have it.”

When the woman again asked him if he was serious, Wright is said to have replied: ‘I’m not playing around.’

Mikkelson’s report said: ‘The $820 cash was tucked in the victim’s bra and defendant Wright placed his hand around victim’s neck and choked her while trying to pull the cash from under her bra.

‘Victim was able to get loose from defendant Wright and started to kneel down and scream.’

After more yelling, Wright allegedly told the woman that he was going to shoot her unless he got the money.

‘Give me the money and we will leave,’ he allegedly said. ‘Give me the money and we will go.’

Mikkelson added: ‘Defendant Wright then tried to choke victim a second time and tried to take her money. Defendant Driver was telling her to give defendant Wright the money.’

The victim reported the crime to police, easily identified Wright as the culprit, and he was arrested. Wright was initially released on bail, but the bail was revoked when he was found in possession of a firearm. That is when a judge issued the warrant for his arrest.

Wright was not arrested simply because he had a handgun without a permit. It certainly wasn’t because of an air freshener, which was the insane lie promulgated on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. It was because he allegedly choked and robbed a woman at gun point.

For those keeping track, this means that of the three most recent and most prominent BLM martyrs — the three men that BLM insists we collectively wail and mourn and honor and celebrate, and whose faces we must paint in murals, and whose names we must remember and repeat — all three allegedly committed acts of brutality against women. These are not men accused of Me Too style “harassment,” but of cruel and vicious abuse.

Now, the inevitable question: Does it matter? For Daunte Wright, specifically, should we even bother bringing up this heinous crime? Yes, it does, and we should, for two significant reasons.

First, a lot of people die every day in this country, often unjustly. Usually they die at the hands of other civilians, but sometimes at the hands of agents of the state. Out of all of that death, all of that misery, all of that suffering, all of that loss, these men in particular are chosen by the cultural powers that be. We are told that we should honor and mourn them more than we honor and mourn the average murder victim. They are the ones who get the politicians weeping beside their golden caskets. They are the ones with the murals and the streets named in their honor.

Our collective reaction to their deaths goes way beyond a simple call for accountability. These men are honored in a way that other victims of injustice are not. Sometimes they receive treatment that is very close to worship. It becomes all the more necessary, for this reason, to speak the truth about who these people were, what they did, the harm they caused, and to ask whether they — of all people — should be the ones with halos placed around their heads.

Second, this alleged crime by Daunte Wright is what led directly to his arrest, which is what led to his death. It is an inextricable part of the story. If Daunte Wright had not robbed a woman at gunpoint, he would be alive today. That much is indisputable, and it brings us to the most important point of all. Daunte Wright, like so many of the other men that BLM calls on us to mourn and honor, appears to have been a violent man who met the fate that so often befalls men of that sort. Does that mean he, or they, “deserved to die”? No. It means simply that when you live that kind of lifestyle, you probably will die, sooner than later, if not at the hands of the police then at the hands of another criminal on the street.

If we don’t want people to die like Daunte Wright, then we should tell them not to live like Daunte Wright. In the words of the Gospel: live by the sword, die by the sword. That message has stood the test of time, and we need to heed it in our culture more than ever.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  WALSH: Daunte Wright Was Wanted For Robbing And Choking A Woman At Gunpoint. Here’s Why That Matters.