Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds went live on Facebook immediately after her fiance was shot by police in his auto.
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“Would this have happened if those passengers would have been white? I don’t think it would have”, Gov. Mark Dayton said to a crowd that gathered outside his residence all day and night Thursday.
Brown said earlier that at least two snipers opened fire on police officers in Dallas on Thursday night, killing four officers and injuring seven others.
Jay Z released a new song addressing police brutality on Thursday, following the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, who were shot and killed by police earlier this week in separate incidents in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, respectively. The aftermath of the shooting was livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video.
Mr Castile was reportedly a licensed gun owner and was carrying his gun legally.
On the video, 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 told him to get his ID, sir”, Reynolds calmly replies. Both had been with the St. Anthony Police Department for four years and were put on administrative leave, as is standard. “Castile was the driver of that vehicle”. At one point during the interaction, Officer Yanez discharged his weapon, striking Castile multiple times.
The statement said the BCA investigation is still ongoing as they collect information from witnesses and squad vehicle video.
The bureau did not give the officers’ races. Reynolds described the officer who shot Castile as Asian.
Protests were also held in several other cities across the country Thursday night after a Minnesota officer on Wednesday fatally shot Philando Castile while he was in a auto with a woman and a child. The governor said he and other state officials would seek more direct involvement.
Speaking to CNN, Castile’s mother said that she suspected she would never learn the whole truth about her son’s death. “We call her Blue cause it’s sad that, h ow can I be a dad that, I never had that”.
“This has to cease”.
Demonstrator Brittaney Peete told The Associated Press that she didn’t hear the gunshots, but she “saw people rushing back toward me saying there was an active shooter”. The group swelled to over 1,000 for a time as people marched from the school vigil. Dayton waded through the crowd as protesters chanted: “What do we want?”
“Although I am constrained in commenting on the particular facts of these cases, I am encouraged that the US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation in Baton Rouge, and I have full confidence in their professionalism and their ability to conduct a thoughtful, thorough, and fair inquiry”, he added.
Some 200-300 protesters with a large supply of donated food and water were still there as midnight approached.
“They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too numerous communities they serve”, Obama wrote.
Jay Z has released a new song in response to the police shootings of two black men in the United States this week, while wife Beyonce led concert-goers in a minute’s silence. “And that hurts. And that should trouble all of us”.
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The FBI’s Dallas division is providing “all possible assistance”, spokeswoman Allison Mahan said.
