Black Lives Matter protesters gathered that night outside the Minnesota governor’s mansion, which is close to the shooting site, and a smaller group remained there into Saturday.
Advertisement
McMillon and her 15-year-old son, Cameron Sterling, appeared at a rally outside Baton Rouge’s City Hall after the 37-year-old Sterling was fatally shot Tuesday during a struggle with two police officers outside a convenience store.
Tyree Johnson, a protester who said he was Castile’s cousin, said officers on the highway fired pellets and gas in his direction.
The DOJ opened a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and is providing assistance to state authorities in Minnesota who are leading the investigation into the death of Philandro Castile. He declined to elaborate on how Castile displayed the weapon or what led up to the deadly Wednesday traffic stop. The video of the moments following the shooting are graphic and show Castile bleeding to death in the vehicle as Reynolds is told not to move as an officer held a gun pointed at the dying man.
Yanez “was reacting to the actions of the driver”, Kelly said. “This had nothing to do with race”.
Goins, an attorney who assisted the Castile family after the shooting but is not representing anyone in the case, said if Yanez and Kauser believed they could be stopping the robbery suspect, they should have approached the auto differently: using lights, sirens and a public address system while they took cover and ordered the occupants to the ground at gunpoint.
Falcon Heights, a mostly white community of 5,000, is served primarily by the nearby St. Anthony Police Department. The two officers involved in the shooting death, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, are on administrative leave, which is customary, during the investigation.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said several videos, including squad auto video, have been collected, though St. Anthony officers don’t wear body cameras.
Court records show it was at least the 32nd time Castile had been pulled over in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area since 2002.
The Minnesota State Patrol said more than 200 protesters shut down Interstate 94 in St. Paul for hours on Saturday night to protest last week’s killing of Philando Castile, 32, in a St. Paul suburb. Protesters responded to the use of pepper spray by screaming at officers and some threw rocks.
As a mother who lost a 16-year-old child in 2009 to street violence she says she wants to do something to prevent others from losing a child. Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, has praised the calmer demonstrations outside his home and said he won’t try to have people removed. Castile’s death – and another police shooting a day earlier in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that also left a black man dead – prompted protests around the country, including in Dallas where five officers were killed and several more were wounded Thursday.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown initially blamed “snipers”, but authorities Friday said Micah Johnson, 25, had acted alone.
Kim Kardashian is speaking out against the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in a statement published on her official website. Others wrote messages thanking officers for their hard work and calling for peace and unity.
In a public statement made by Castile’s girlfriend Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, who was also in the auto and videoed the horrifying aftermath of the officer-involved shooting, it was noted that police indicated at the time of the stop that the vehicle was being pulled over for a “busted tail light”. The video shows her in a auto next to a bloodied Castile slumped in a seat.
Advertisement
“I guess I wasn’t moving fast enough for him”, said Martin, who said the officer was six feet away when he sprayed him without warning. Do you think the officer that shot Castile will be charged given that the victim’s girlfriend was able to capture the moments just after the shooting?
