UPDATE 1-Minnesota court orders former officer resentenced in Australian woman’s shooting death

(Adds background of Noor’s conviction and sentence)

Sept 15 (Reuters) – The Minnesota Supreme Court vacated the third-degree murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor on Wednesday and ordered a lower court to resentence him on the lesser manslaughter conviction in the death of Justine Ruszczyk, an Australian-American woman who called 911.

Ruszczyk had called the police on the night of July 15, 2017, after hearing a woman screaming near her home. As she approached the police vehicle, Noor fired his gun at her from the passenger seat.

A jury acquitted him of second-degree murder, but convicted him of third-degree “depraved mind” murder and second-degree manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 12-1/2 years in prison. An appeals court upheld the convictions.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Franklin Paul and Mark Porter)

(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021. Click For Restrictions – https://agency.reuters.com/en/copyright.html