Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports:
A St. Paul man died Wednesday night after being shot by police in Falcon Heights, the immediate aftermath of which was shown in a video recorded by the man’s girlfriend as she sat next to him and which was widely shared on Facebook.
The girlfriend started the live-stream video with the man in the driver’s seat slumped next to her, his white T-shirt soaked with blood on the left side. In the video, taken with her phone, she says they were pulled over at Larpenteur Avenue and Fry Street for a broken taillight. The “police shot him for no apparent reason, no reason at all,” she says. Friends at the scene identified the man as Philando Castile, 32, cafeteria supervisor at J.J. Hill Montessori School in St. Paul.
The girlfriend said on the video that the officer “asked him for license and registration. He told him that it was in his wallet, but he had a pistol on him because he’s licensed to carry. The officer said don’t move. As he was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him in the arm four or five times.”
The video shows a uniformed police officer holding a pistol on the couple from outside the car. The officer can be heard to say, “I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out.”
More from the New York Times:
Family members demanded justice for Mr. Castile during an interview on CNN early Thursday. Mr. Castile’s uncle, Clarence Castile, said police officers who were meant to protect Americans had instead become “our executioners and judges and murderers.”
When he watched the video, he said, “I saw a young man, shot, helpless — shot for no apparent reason. I saw my nephew shot by a man, clinging to his life with no help. It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life.”
Mr. Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, said she had taught her son to be extremely cautious when encountering members of law enforcement. “If you get stopped by the police, comply,” Ms. Castile said. “Comply, comply, comply.”
“My son was a law-abiding citizen and he did nothing wrong,” she said. “He’s no thug.” She added, “I think he was just black in the wrong place.”
While the girlfriend was extraordinarily composed during much of the video, you may not want to watch it.