The heartbroken fiancé of slain Australian woman Justine Damond has spoken out for the first time since his bride-to-be was shot by a Minneapolis cop, saying he wishes he’d stayed on the phone with her that fateful night.
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“I have played this over in my head over and over,” Don Damond told the Star Tribune. “Why didn’t I stay on the phone with her?”
Recounting his experience the night Officer Mohamed Noor killed his future wife, Don, a casino manager, told the paper that he was in Las Vegas on the night of July 15 when Justine called to say she could hear weird noises in the alleyway behind their house — maybe a woman being raped.
He told her to call 911 and stayed on the phone with her until she said the police had arrived. He told Justine to stay put and call him back — then hung up, the paper reports.
That’s when authorities say Justine walked out into the alleyway in her pajamas, and Noor fired at her.
All Don knew was that his texts to his fiancé were going unanswered.
Police finally called him back around 12:45 a.m. to say a woman had been shot dead outside his house — and they thought it was Justine.
He raced to the airport, where he got another call and learned a cop had pulled the trigger.
When Don finally stepped foot off the plane in Minneapolis, he immediately collapsed, sobbing into a friend’s arms.
“There’s like a glitch in the matrix,” he recalled thinking, the Tribune reports. “I just know I’m going to wake up from this nightmare.”
Now he’s faced with organizing a funeral instead of their Hawaiian beach wedding.
On Sunday, he set up a fund-raising page so well-wishers can donate to charitable causes his wife supported.
“Justine lived her purpose of helping teach people to reach ther [six] full potential. She touched many people as she reflected goodness, laughter and love in the world,” Don wrote on the page, which has so far reached around $5,000 in donations.
“This fund is to help support a memorial fund for Justine and charitable causes supporting social justice that were important in her heart.”
