Sunday 10 July 2016

Lawyer: Officer who shot Philando Castile reacted to gun, not race

As Philando Castile's head slumps backward while he lies dying next to her, Diamond Reynolds looks into the camera and explains a Minnesota police officer just shot her fiancé four times.
The nation is, by now, accustomed to grainy cell phone videos of officer-involved shootings, but this footage from Falcon Heights, outside Minneapolis, is something different, more visceral: a woman live-streaming a shooting's aftermath with the police officer a few feet away, his gun still trained on her bloody fiancé.
"He let the officer know that he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm," Reynolds said as she broadcast the details of Wednesday's evening shooting on Facebook.
 The shooting took place in St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights, a mostly white community of 5,000, served primarily by the nearby St. Anthony Police Department.
Authorities say that during the traffic stop, Yanez approached Castile's car from the driver's side and another officer, Joseph Kauser, approached from the passenger side. Yanez opened fire, striking the driver Castile "multiple times."
Neither Reynolds, nor her daughter in the car were injured. Castile was transported to a medical center where he was pronounced dead.
Yanez and Kauser were put on "standard" administrative leave, as the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) conducts "an independent investigation into the incident," according to a news release by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.
The BCA said "several" videos, including squad car video, "have been collected as evidence." St. Anthony Police Department officers do not wear body cameras, the BCA release noted, and a gun was recovered on the scene.
Saturday marked a third straight day of protests over Castile's killing, with demonstrators encamped outside the governor's mansion in St. Paul. About 30 protesters formed a circle in the street late in the morning as an organizer pray for peace and togetherness.
Rev. Jesse Jackson made a surprise visit to the governor's mansion Saturday after spending the day with Reynolds and her daughter. Jackson said the shooting death was a wake-up call for America and urged unity, saying, "the whole world is watching,”
“We learned to survive apart, now we must learn to live together. We must learn to live together,” said Jackson.

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