UPDATE:
FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. (AP) — The Latest on a police shooting in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota (all times local):
Authorities have identified the two police officers involved in the fatal shooting of a black Minnesota man during a traffic stop.
The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension names them as Officer Jeronimo Yanez and Officer Joseph Kauser. It says both have been with the St. Anthony Police Department for four years.
The BCA statement says Yanez approached Philando Castile’s car from the driver’s side during the stop in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights on Wednesday night, and Kauser from the passenger side. It says Yanez opened fire, striking Castile multiple times.
No one else was injured.
Thomas Kelly, an attorney representing Yanez, did not immediately return a call seeking comment after the officers were identified. Kelly declined to comment on the case earlier Thursday.
The BCA says its investigation is ongoing, including interviews with witnesses. Several videos, including squad car video of the incident, have been collected. St. Anthony officers don’t wear body cameras.
9 p.m.
Mark Zuckerberg has issued a statement on his Facebook account saying the images from the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile show that the world has a long way to go in building a “more open and connected world.”
The Facebook CEO said Thursday that he watched video that shows the aftermath of the shooting. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, posted video of the aftermath using Facebook Live.
Zuckerberg says: “The images we’ve seen this week are graphic and heartbreaking, and they shine a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day. While I hope we never have to see another video like Diamond’s, it reminds us why coming together to build a more open and connected world is so important — and how far we still have to go.”
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7:45 p.m.
Hundreds of protesters have braved the rain and gathered outside the Minnesota governor’s official residence to protest the police shooting of a black man.
The crowd swelled to more than 1,000 for a time as people marched from a vigil Thursday evening for Philando Castile. The 37-year-old was fatally shot during a traffic stop Wednesday night in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights. His girlfriend posted video of the aftermath using Facebook Live.
Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton waded through the crowd as protesters chanted: “What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now.” The governor did not attempt to address the noisy crowd through the protesters’ underpowered public address system.
Police blocked vehicles from stately Summit Avenue in front of the mansion to accommodate the huge crowd.
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7:15 p.m.
Google has joined those voicing outrage and dismay over the police shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota.
Posting on its corporate Twitter account, Google said employees held vigils for both men and “all those like them whose lives have been cut short unfairly.” The post said employees were devastated by the deaths and added that the company stands “in solidarity with the fight for racial justice.” The tweet included the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.
While many corporations try to avoid sensitive issues, Google often endorses social causes on its home page and social media. The company recently tweeted in support of gay pride celebrations and expressed sympathy for victims of a terrorist attack in Turkey.
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7 p.m.
The mother of a black man who was fatally shot during a suburban Minneapolis traffic stop says, “This has to stop, right now.”
Valerie Castile spoke at a vigil Thursday evening outside J.J. Hill Montessori, a St. Paul Public Schools magnet school where her son, Philando Castile, supervised the cafeteria.
Valerie Castile called her son “an angel.” She said she never thought she would lose him.
Philando Castile was fatally shot after being pulled over in Falcon Heights on Wednesday night.
Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, was in the car and broadcast the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook.
Reynolds also spoke at the vigil. She said the shooting was “cruel” and called for justice for her boyfriend.
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ORIGINAL STORY:
WARNING: The video below is extremely graphic. Please watch with caution.
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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