An attorney for Geronimo Yanez, the police officer who shot and killed Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, on Wednesday, July 6, said Saturday that the fatal shooting was not racially motivated.
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Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds was in the vehicle and streamed the immediate aftermath of the shooting live on Facebook.
Few details on Philando Castile’s death have surfaced since he was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a St. Paul, Minnesota suburb Wednesday night.
It remains unclear at this point how exactly the stop proceeded, but an officer shot and killed Castile as his girlfriend and her young daughter sat in his auto. Reynolds described the officer who shot Castile as Asian; the St. Anthony Police Department’s 2015 annual report notes Yanez is a member of the National Latino Police Officers Association.
Yanez’s attorney said in a statement to NBC News that Yanez is “cooperating with law enforcement” and is “deeply saddened” for Castile’s family.
“This week we watched Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two innocent black men, get senselessly murdered by police officers”, she began.
Bumgarner, a well-known criminal justice scholar, said he was not aware of the circumstances of the Castile shooting.
The bureau did not give the officers’ races.
Dayton says his statement sparked a flood of reaction that reflects the “difference that exists in Minnesota and across the country” on the issue of police-community relations and race.
Breitbart’s Lee Stranahan also reported how the Institutional Left and Black Lives Matter movement, manipulate the rhetoric after a police shooting.
Saturday marked a third straight day of protests over Castile’s killing, with demonstrators encamped outside the governor’s mansion in St. Paul.
“He’s a very sensitive officer, he cares about people”, Kelly said.
Protesters remained there Friday and Dayton said he had no plans to order police to remove them. He said Yanez and Kauser were not only good students but they were standout students in his classes. He also said that he’d decide whether to turn the case over to a grand jury once the state presents its findings to his office.
Speaking later, he said America is “horrified” over the Dallas shootings and there’s no possible justification for the attacks.
“My heart goes out to the Castile family and all the other families who have experienced this kind of tragedy”, said Zuckerberg today in his post.
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Micah Johnson, who donned a protective vest and used a military-style semi-automatic rifle, was killed by a robot-delivered bomb after the Thursday evening shootings, authorities said.
