INTRODUCTION: Hello, I’m Hayden Turner...I normally sit on this side of the camera presenting wildlife documentaries, but tonight I’m here to introduce a film about my dear friend Justine Damond Ruszczyk. In July this year, just weeks before her wedding, Justine was shot dead by a Minneapolis policeman after she called 911 to report a possible assault. Her death unleashed a storm of community protests about the use of excessive police force and raised questions which are still to be answered. Tonight…for the first time… we hear from Justine’s family, friends and the lawyer fighting for justice.

POLICE AUDIO CALLS

530, shots fired – can we get EMS code 3 Washburn and 51st street? We have one down -

- Copy - 530, starting CPR – 530 what is your EMS on this? – EMS is coming, rescue is coming.

- Are you code 4 for medical? - 530 there are no suspects at large.

DON DAMOND, FIANCÉ: That night I told Justine to call 911, I had this conception that when she said, ‘the police are here. ‘I felt like all is well, like the knights in shining armour have arrived. I’ll never feel that way again.

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: It doesn’t add up, that’s the problem for us, it doesn’t add up, why a policeman would shoot a woman in her pyjamas?

News stories: This is a shocking killing, it is inexplicable – the lack of video evidence makes it harder to piece together exactly what happened.

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: We want justice for the family so we need the truth to come out, one way or another. We want to know the reason why she was shot. Why is she dead?

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: Not just who pulled the trigger, but why.

News story, ABC: Justine Damond (Ruszczyk) is the fifth person in Minnesota to be fatally shot by police this year.

ROBERT BENNETT, US CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER FOR RUSZCZYK FAMILY: Her death did turn everything on its head. You know? Started to question, what are these officers thinking?

MELINDA BARRY, US NEIGHBOURHOOD GROUP, ‘JUSTICE FOR JUSTINE.: We had not experienced the police violence on a personal level before. It’s a different narrative. And suddenly people see this differently, they see, this could be me.

ROBERT BENNETT, US CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER FOR RUSZCZYK FAMILY: There’s no excuse for it. If she can be shot, anybody can be shot. Any 911 caller, any mother in her pyjamas, anybody can be shot.

MARYAN HEFFERNAN, STEPMOTHER: She was comfortable in America and she was so happy with Don. We’ve often commented on the level of violence in America but we really didn’t ever think it would ever touch us.

Program title: Without Rhyme or Reason

DON DAMOND, FIANCÉ: There’s a number of things that had to line up for this to happen in the way that it did. I was away. I was out of town on a business trip, on a Saturday.

ZACH DAMOND-MIDNIGHT, STEPSON: Everybody was just gone which is weird you know. My dad only goes to Vegas a couple of times a year and I’m usually at home and someone of the neighbours are home. But yeah, everyone was gone.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: The wedding was to be in August. I’d spoken to her in the morning and she had been talking about the bridesmaid’s dresses arriving and how excited she was about that. She was burning the candle at both ends for sure. So she was getting very little sleep and very excited about everything that was coming.And she had been writing a lot and she was really excited about her completion of some of her work that she’d been doing.

DON DAMOND, FIANCÉ: She had a course that she was teaching. Meditation was a big part of that. She was a natural teacher. It was her passion, it was her purpose, it was her Dharma. Justine and I met at a meditation retreat in Colorado Springs. The connection that I felt was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.

ZACH DAMOND-MIDNIGHT, STEPSON: My Dad, he kind of like followed her around like a little dog. She went skydiving and he watched her fall out of the plane and said, that’s the girl I’m going to marry.

DON DAMOND, FIANCE: So I came home and I told all my friends and family that I just met my future wife. They said, great when can we meet her. I said, she lives 9,000 miles away.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: To suddenly start to imagine that there was the love of her life in another country, miles away, was a little unsettling for her But yet,it wouldn’t go away. She was becoming more and more enamoured of this man who she connected on every level with.



JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: I didn’t know that this had progressed past, you know, just casual conversation until the day she called me up and said, ‘Dad, I found the guy I love and I’m probably going to America.’ Whoops. I didn’t want to lose her and I believe that Australia is a great place to live. And so I was hoping she’d bring him back here.

JASON RUSZCZYK, BROTHER: Jussy and I grew up on the northern beaches of Sydney. Mum’s Australian. She studied nursing. My dad’s American, after he finished his studies he met mum overseas and they got married.

Home video:

Justine: This is my Daddy

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: I was beginning to question some of the things that were happening in America. There was lots of conflict on the streets, demonstrations at universities around the country where there was violence, things were disruptive.

MARYAN HEFFERNAN, STEPMOTHER: There was a lot of discrimination against different cultures, which he felt wrong, was wrong.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: I was looking for a different kind of social environment and uh, Australia appealed to me. Justine as a child was just one of those wonderful little girls. Very verbal and very determined. Straight As and all the time, without much effort.

Home video:

Jason, move out of the way

You back up Justine

I’m trying to film their feet - Gidday, gidday, gidday

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: There were always animals involved in Justine’s life. Margaret was a member of Wires, and our backyard was full of possums and birds. If that influenced her to become a vet, I mean that’s a wonderful thing.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: Our first year of vet school was wonderful and exciting. But as we went into our second year Justine’s mum Margaret was um ailing from cancer.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: Margaret became very seriously ill and Justine was doing exams at that time. Margaret wanted her to stay at school. I took some time off work and looked after Mum at home, she had to get moved to a hospital. And then, she ultimately passed away. She graduated with honours. She was doing locum work in the UK for about a year and at that time, something changed in her life.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: We had many conversations because she couldn’t understand how I was loving it so much and she wasn’t. There’s an amount of resilience that you need to do the job that we do. And whether she wanted to learn it or not, she definitely didn’t for some reason.

JASON RUSZCZYK, BROTHER: She sort of put veterinary science on the backburner then she was really going through some tough times. We talked about what she’d been through with mum, and how she was still struggling with the grief and the loss.

MARYAN HEFFERNAN, STEPMOTHER: She wanted to save everyone from pain and hurt. She wanted to save animals, she wanted to save people. I think she probably wanted to save her mother. I think that’s one of the things that was deeply passionate about her.

She went down to an ashram in India.She wanted to understand a lot more spirituality, where she could help people and help herself and heal herself.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: She was an academic at heart. She had an amazing inquisitive brain.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: She became interested in how much control the mind could have on the body’s health. Could you slow down progress of uh an illness or something? So, she became interested in studying neuroscience and brainwaves and scanning and how meditation uh can control the body. I never reached an end where I was totally satisfied that I understood what she was looking for but it was certainly a life-long quest on her part.

JASON RUSZCZYK, BROTHER: Once she’d settled back in Sydney she started teaching meditation workshops and courses. I’ve seen someone so pro-active in fixing themselves. Then out of the blue she met Don.The original plan I think was for Don to come to Australia but Juzzy and Don decided they should go back to Minneapolis.

MARYAN HEFFERNAN, STEPMOTHER: The suburb where she lived was sweet, Norman Rockwell little houses and lawns and people with signs saying all welcome in this home.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: When she found herself in Minneapolis she described it as this beautiful community of like-minded people that she’d suddenly landed in.

ZACH DAMOND-MIDNIGHT, STEPSON: We got close very quickly and she felt like another Mom to me. it was just two guys living here together and then she literally came in and just made it a home and little Jussy things showed up everywhere like gnomes and fairies and stuffed animals and her art or pieces of Australia.

Iphone video:

Don: Niagara Falls, reporting live. Hey, reporting live – we’re in Canada and letting you know, it’s f***ing cold.

(Ends)

DON DAMOND, FIANCÉ: When she got here in December I gave her a gift and her gift was a fleece, wool socks and a hat and gloves. Because it was December, you know.

It was a matter of months before she was doing her work, teachingshe went to Lake Harriet Spiritual community and quickly found a home there, found a voice, a place for her voice to be heard.

(Justine presenting in February 2017 at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community)

I originally trained as a veterinary surgeon, and I’m now working to teach people about themselves from the level of quantum physics, from the level of neuroscience, so you can work out how your brain works and how you can use it to create the state of health you want and the life that you want.

(Ends)

DON DAMOND, FIANCÉ: You have to have the ability to walk in that world of science and spirituality but she bridged those so beautifully and then delivered it in a way that wasn’t overly technical and when she’d bring humour in, it’d lighten it all up.

(Justine presenting in February 2017 at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community)

So, this is the last opportunity – there’s no going back once you find out about it, the door’s still open a crack but I’m going to get them to lock it.

(Ends)

JASON RUSZCZYK, BROTHER: She was a strong woman, she took a while to get there. But she got there.It took a while to get there but that’s why she was so… powerful.

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: They were due to get married, in Hawaii. The last conversation that we had with her was in the car and she wanted to ask the kids formally to be pageboy and flower girl and that’s when she told them the story about saving the ducks out of the drain

KATRINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: For me and Jason it was almost like ‘oh yeah, another story about Jussy saving an animal, out of a tree or a drain or something.’

KATRINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: And I feel so silly now, having felt that, because it’s so significant in retrospect and sosymbolic in a lot of ways.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: So Justine obviously had many things to do before the wedding and we were in contact a few times a day through that period, you know, up to the night of the 15th Don was away on work. So Justine was home alone.

MARYAN HEFFERNAN, STEPMOTHER: Justine was convinced that she heard someone in extreme distress in the back laneway, and so much so that she called Don.

KATRINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: She’d heard someone that she thought was being raped.

DON DAMOND, FIANCÉ: It was the hottest night of the year, so everybody’s windows were closed and air conditioning was on so they wouldn’t have heard. I’m not sure how she did, but she heard something with the air conditioning on.

MARYAN HEFFERNAN, STEPMOTHER: It didn’t stop so she called him again and he said, call 911.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: She did what any Aussie woman would do. Go to the police, because you know it’s safe and they’re gonna get to the answer of it. In this case, it was the wrong decision.

MARYAN HEFFERNAN, STEPMOTHER: We gather that she still heard this noise and she called 911 a second time to say, ‘it’s been eight minutes, or something, and there’s still no one here.’

JASON RUSZCZYK, BROTHER: They were rookie cops, we know they didn’t have their dash cameras on, they didn’t have their body cameras on.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: But for some reason, she went out into the laneway behind her house. The house fronts onto a street and the garages are in the back. It’s a laneway with streetlights on it and motion sensors, lights on all the garages. I can only suppose that she came out of the house and realising that the police car had gone past the site of the incident, that she walked up the police car and for what... for some unknown reason, a man shot her and killed her.

JEN HEARN, FRIEND: She was at the peak of her wave that she’d worked so hard to get to. And none of it made sense, absolutely none of it made sense.

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW

It’s such a paradox in the way that she died. She lived her life as a peaceful person inspiring others. She helped people transform their lives. She transformed her own life.

(Press conference)

John Ruszczyk, news vision

Justine was a beacon to all of us.We only ask that the light of justice shine down on the circumstances of her death.

Don Damond, news vision

Sadly her family and I have been provided with almost no additional information by law enforcement regarding what happened.

(Zach Damond-Midnight, Facebook video)

This has to stop, my mum is dead, I’m so done with all this violence, It’s so much *** America sucks, these cops need to get trained differently.

(ends)

ZACH DAMOND-MIDNIGHT, STEPSON: I was just shocked, total two opposites colliding at once. Just, you know, couldn’t believe it. I still can’t some days.

Archive, marchers (Minneapolis): Shut it down… Shut it down

MELINDA BARRY, US NEIGHBOURHOOD GROUP, ‘JUSTICE FOR JUSTINE.’ A few days after, Justine was killed, our neighbourhood held a rally.

We don’t feel alright.

MELINDA BARRY, US NEIGHBOURHOOD GROUP, ‘JUSTICE FOR JUSTINE’: We feel like true justice for Justine isn’t one police officer being convicted. We feel like true justice for Justine is a systemic change in policing. People from the African-America community came to us. They came down and were present on the block with us. We didn’t understand this at all until this happened to Justine. I still can’t relate to what the African American communities are going through and the vulnerability that they feel. People like Jason Sole helped us better understand what’s better going on with policing in general.

JASON SOLE, HAMLINE UNIVERSITY & MINNEAPOLIS CHAPTER OF THE NAACP: When I first heard about Justine being killed I said, man, that’s tragic. I automatically sent people over there. In no just society should you be the one calling the police and end up dead. So here we have a longstanding problem and it’s time for us to fix it.

(News story)

The police shooting of Australian Justine Damond has caused political upheaval in Minneapolis – the officer who pulled the trigger is Mohammed Noor – Noor has refused to give evidence to investigators and today officials admitted that they can’t force him to break his silence.

(Ends)

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: The shooter has decided to plead the 5th amendment which means he’s not being interviewed by the police. And he can’t be compelled in court if it goes to court, to speak either.

LIBOR JANY, METRO REPORTER, STAR TRIBUNE NEWSPAPER: There was this tremendous pressure on the mayor and the police chief for accountability, again for the officer involved to be charged. It ultimately led to the ouster of the police chief.

(News story)

Betsy Hodges, former Minneapolis Mayor: And I asked Chief Harteau for her resignation – she tendered it and I have accepted it.

Protestors: Your police department has terrorised us enough.

(Ends)

MELINDA BARRY, US NEIGHBOURHOOD GROUP, ‘JUSTINE FOR JUSTINE’: The activists actually went into city hall where the mayor was speaking and took over the meeting.

Protestor: You want to take your staff with you because you’ve terrorised us.

(News Story)

Reporter: Eventually they succeeded in shutting down the press conference and protestors celebrated their victory.

Protestors: No justice, no peace, prosecute the police.

(Ends)

JASON RUSZCZYK, BROTHER: About two weeks after Jussy passed away we all flew over to Minneapolis. I really wanted to see the life she was living over there and the people that she’d met. I learnt how loved she was in that neighbourhood.

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: We spent a lot of time just walking up and down that laneway trying to visualise what happened. The information from the media is that maybe there was someone slapping the back of the car. It’s not in my mind enough to um, be a startling factor under the circumstances where there’s no other criminal activity going on. It was apparent to us that there’s very bright lighting, even the spot where she died, it’s directly under a spotlight.

DON DAMOND, FIANCE: There’s also motion detectors on several of the garages.It’s hard to understand how she wouldn’t have been well-illuminated.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: Werealised there was a possibility we’d be unhappy with the way the police force investigated it. Someone took my daughter’s life for no reason and I think that’s a crime, and I’d like to see him in court.

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: We’re waiting to hear from the state prosecutor of whether he will make the determination to lay charges on Noor.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: If they decide not to charge him then the civil case that we want to bring will start earlier. My family came up with Bob Bennett. He fights police malfeasance and violence. He likes to fight those public cases.

Roundtable discussion Robert Bennett and staff: We’re in the middle of what I would call the answer deprivation phase – the most important things are the things that are redacted and we need to see those.

ROBERT BENNETT, US CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER FOR RUSZCZYK FAMILY: Justine’s case is a civil rights case, this is a use of force that is so beyond the pale that it would cause other people to not to call the police. The city of Minneapolis has historically had problems with the use of excessive force. We’ve had more problems here with shootings because of some of the way that officers are being trained today.

Discussions in the office over previous shooting incident:

Robert Bennett: There’s no reason to shoot this woman… (shots fired)

Police on video: Show me your hands, lay down so we can help you – Bob: so we’ve got seven guys in a tactical semi-circle, seven pistols and four AR fifteens – there’s no reason to shoot this woman.

ROBERT BENNETT, US CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER FOR RUSZCZYK FAMILY: In this post 9/11 world, areas of police training, especially with trigger engagement decisions have gotten a lot more militaristic.

In Justine’s case- I can’t imagine they teach officers that one of the good lanes of fire is across the lap of their driving partner. I mean, you know, it’s just crazy.

JENNIFER BJORHUS, REPORTER, STAR TRIBUNE NEWSPAPER: I’ve spoken to police officers who are upfront and frank about the fact that they are often terrified. They are asked to walk towards trouble when everyone else is fleeing. They don’t know what they’re going to find. And there’s a lot of guns out there. It’s the United States, everyone loves their guns.

‘We’ve already had one more since Justine…’

JENNIFER BJORHUS, REPORTER, STAR TRIBUNE NEWSPAPER: We were shocked to discover that there was no reliable source of information on the officer-involved shootings that were happening. Nobody was tracking it consistently. So we built a database of all the deaths in our state since 2000 which is when we had consistent death certificate data and we found that excluding police car chases, 162 people had died in encounters with police, or police had killed 162 people. Most of these people were shot. As far as we know, in recent history, no officer in our state has ever been criminally prosecuted for shooting and killing someone, in the line of duty.

Conversations in the newsroom:

So what’s your best guess on what the charge might be in Justine’s case?

From the attorneys I’ve spoken to, if Freeman wants a conviction he’ll go for manslaughter, intentional discharge.

(Ends)

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: I understand there’s only one case in the history of the Minnesota police department where charges have been laid and that was Philando Castile’s case, just recently.

JENNIFER BJORHUS, REPORTER, STAR TRIBUNE NEWSPAPER: Philando Castile and his girlfriend were driving one evening. He was pulled over by a suburban police officer named Jeronimo Yanez.

ROBERT BENNETT, US CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER FOR RUSZCZYK FAMILY: He approaches the car and Philando tells him that he has a gun permit, to conceal and carry and tells them where his gun is.

ROBERT BENNETT, US CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER FOR RUSZCZYK FAMILY: You have a panicking officer. Who begins shooting.

Diamond Reynolds on Facebook stream (girlfriend): Stay with me, we got pulled over for a busted tail light in the back.

Yanez: I told him to reach for it – I told him to get his hand open.

Reynolds: He was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm.

JENNIFER BJORHUS, REPORTER, STAR TRIBUNE NEWSPAPER: It seems ludicrous that someone would be pulled over for a minor traffic infraction and wind up dead.

JASON SOLE, HAMLINE UNIVERSITY & MINNEAPOLIS CHAPTER OF THE NAACP: Yanez was charged with manslaughter, a number of charges, I think unlawful discharge. He walked out of there without being convicted of anything. We wanted a conviction for that. Because if Philando couldn’t get justice in that case, we really don’t understand in which case there can be justice.

KATARINA RUSZCZYK, SISTER-IN-LAW: We’re hopeful but with those odds it’s not looking great that charges will be laid, let alone a conviction.

JASON SOLE, HAMLINE UNIVERSITY & MINNEAPOLIS CHAPTER OF THE NAACP: With Justine, it’s uniting people. People are talking, like there’s conversation. I don’t know if we’re going to get the justice part though. The system is sick. So, you have to convict this officer, so we can help the system get better, regardless of whether he was a black man, she was a white woman. Someone has to be convicted so a new standard is set.

JOHN RUSZCZYK, FATHER: This event has changed my life. It’s stolen, you know, 40 years of my daughter’s life. That’s a very big crime as I see it. She would have wanted us to go to the end, of seeing some change. And her death is not something that can be washed away.

DON DAMOND, FIANCE: There has to be accountability for why somebody would do that and ultimately take the life of somebody else. I think that Justine, who she was, the people she impacted and continues to impact, the story that is being told about what happened here and the way the community has risen up, it’s all around love. There’s going to be justice at some level but there’s also going to be some spiritual evolution – that’s what Justine would want and who she was.

CAPTIONS ON SCREEN

The Minnesota Police Department stated that it was not able to provide comment to Australian Story on the Justine Damond Ruszczyk case because ‘it is an open case’. The Ruszczyk family is hoping for a decision in relation to criminal charges in December.