FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. (AP) — A Minnesota officer fatally shot a man in a car with a woman and a child, an official said, and authorities are looking into whether the aftermath was livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video, which shows a woman in a vehicle with a man whose shirt appears to be soaked in blood telling the camera “police just shot my boyfriend for no apparent reason.”
St. Anthony Police interim police chief Jon Mangseth said the incident began when an officer pulled over a vehicle around 9 p.m. Wednesday in Falcon Heights, a St. Paul suburb Mangseth’s department serves. Mangseth said he did not have details about the reason for the traffic stop, but that at some point shots were fired. The man was struck but no one else was injured, he said.
As word of the shooting and video spread, relatives of the man joined scores of people who gathered at the scene of the shooting and outside the hospital where the man died and identified him as Philando Castile of St. Paul, a 32-year-old cafeteria supervisor at a Montessori school.
He was “a black individual driving in Falcon Heights who was immediately criminally profiled and he lost his life over it tonight,”Castile’s cousin, Antonio Johnson, told the Star Tribune. Protesters then moved on to the governor’s mansion in nearby St. Paul, where around 200 people chanted and demanded action from Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton.
The shooting comes as police use of force, particularly against minorities, is back in the national spotlight after the video-recorded fatal shooting earlier this week of 37-year-old Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge police. The U.S. Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation Wednesday into the shooting, which took place after Sterling, who was black, scuffled with two white police officers on the pavement outside a convenience store.
The video posted Wednesday night on Facebook Live appeared to show the aftermath of a shooting like that described by Mangseth. It shows the woman in a car next to a bloodied man quietly slumped in a seat. The woman describes being pulled over for a “busted tail light” and her boyfriend being shot as he told the officer that he was carrying a pistol for which he was licensed. A person who appears to be an armed police officer stands at the car’s window, and sounds distraught as he tells the woman to keep her hands where they are and intermittently swears.
The Associated Press couldn’t immediately verify the authenticity of the video. Mangseth said he had been “made aware there was a livestream on Facebook” but said he had not yet seen the video and didn’t know anything about its contents.
The woman in the video says that the man she identified as her boyfriend was licensed to carry a gun and was trying to get his ID and wallet when the officer shot him. Police said in a statement that a handgun was recovered from the scene.
The department did not release details about the officer involved, including his race or service record, except to say that he has been placed on paid administrative leave.
The officer tells her to keep her hands up and says, “I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out.”
“You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir,” the woman responds.
The video goes on to show the woman exiting the car and being handcuffed. A young girl can be seen and is heard saying at one point, “I’m scared, Mommy.”
The woman describes being put in the back seat of the police car and says, “The police just shot my boyfriend for no apparent reason.”
Clarence Castile spoke to the Star Tribune from the Hennepin County Medical Center, where he said his nephew died minutes after arriving.
He said Philando Castile had worked in the J.J. Hill school cafeteria for 12 to 15 years, “cooking for the little kids.” He said his nephew was “a good kid” who grew up in St. Paul.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been called to investigate, Mangseth said. A spokesman for that agency couldn’t immediately be reached.
The president of the Minneapolis NAACP, Nekima Levy-Pounds, told the crowd she has no faith in the system in the wake of this and other police shootings of black men, including last year’s killing of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis. Levy-Pounds was a leading voice during the protests outside a police station that followed Clark’s death, as well as during a renewed wave of protests after prosecutors decided not to charge the officers involved.
“I’m tired of the laws and policies on the books being used to justify murder,” Levy-Pounds, a civil rights attorney, told the crowd as rain began to fall. “This is completely unacceptable. Somebody say, ‘Enough is Enough.'”
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Associated Press writer Sarah Rankin in Chicago contributed to this report.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Decade after decade of non-stop propaganda that says, “Black men are dangerous.” Here is one more from the abundant harvest that results from it.
I can’t keep track of the rules cop apologists keep helpfully instructing non-white folk to follow:
Am I missing any?
Btw, has anyone heard about police officers shooting white men for being white and doing random daily stuff, or is it only black men that they murder for being black?
Yes, Michael Bell was shot in the head in front of his house after an encounter with police. It appears that during a tussle with Michael one of the officers got his holster hooked on the drivers side mirror and shouted to the other officer that he was going for his gun, and the cop shot him in the head point blank. Michael Bell had blond hair and blue eyes.
Kelly Thomas, another white man, was beaten to death by six Fullerton cops for no apparent reason, other than it appeared as a mentally ill, homeless person, who was well known to the police, he was an irritant to them.
This has been my main issue since my own life altering experience with law enforcement 26 years ago. It clearly affects Latinos and African Americans more, but the police in this country are out of control.
I don’t want minimize the danger that minorities face in everyday encounters, and the issue of race and police brutality are deeply intertwined, But I think it is a mistake to look at this as primarily a race issue rather than as a systemic problem with not only the police, but the legal system in general.
So, it’s not enough you shoot and murder a man for reaching for his ID and car registration, but you handcuff his distraught girlfriend? GD you people!
They cuffed and detained Tamir Rice’s sister while he lie dying in the playground. So no surprise. What never ceases to amaze me it the complete lack of concern they show for not only those they kill, but the loved ones of the their victims as well.
Contrast this with the emotional hysterics when one of their own dies in the line of duty, and you really have to wonder about the mentality of law enforcement.