MINNEAPOLIS _ Authorities on Tuesday released graphic dashcam footage of Officer Jeronimo Yanez firing seven shots into Philando Castile's car last year, killing him as viewers watched the aftermath on Facebook Live.
The video and other data collected in the investigation was released after Yanez's acquittal last Friday in the July 6 killing that thrust Minnesota into the national debate over police use of force and racial profiling.
The video released by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Ramsey County attorney's office starts about 9:05 p.m. as Yanez activates his squad lights to pull Castile over on Larpenteur Avenue in Falcon Heights for a nonworking brake light, and to see if he is the suspect in an armed robbery from four days earlier. Radio traffic said Yanez pulled over Castile and his girlfriend because of they "just look like people that were involved in a robbery" because of Castile's "wide set nose."
The video hit a nerve with community activists, who said it underscored the racial bias some officers have against black men.
"I wept when I saw the dashcam video," said civil rights attorney Nekima Levy-Pounds, who is running for Minneapolis mayor. "He had an unreasonable fear of Philando Castile as a black man, which caused him to overreact and be hypervigilant, which resulted in the death of Philando Castile."
Tyrone Terrill, president of the African-American Leadership Council, said the video could further widen the gap in community-police relations.
"No, no, no," Terrill said minutes after viewing the video. "You don't have to remain calm on this one. You have a right to be outraged. You have a right to be angry. And I would be disappointed if you weren't outraged, if you weren't angry. It raises the question _ how will you ever get a guilty verdict?"
Terrill said he only advocated peaceful, nonviolent demonstrations in reaction to the video. It's unclear if its public release has sparked any new rallies following a long weekend of demonstrations, including the shutdown of Interstate 94 last Friday hours after Yanez was acquitted.
"The community will need time, and a lot of it," Terrill said. "This is not going to be one of those that goes away. We're going to need a lot of time, a lot of time."
The data release included thousands of pages of documents, graphic autopsy photos, photos of Castile's bloodied and bullet-riddled car and interviews with Yanez and others.
Yanez met with two special agents from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension the day after the shooting, accompanied by two attorneys, Tom Kelly and Robert Fowler. It had been a long 17 hours for Yanez and his attorneys noted he had only gotten a couple hours of sleep. Yanez had only pulled over two people since starting his shift at 6 p.m.
Since it was a slow night, a recent convenience store robbery, to which Yanez responded to the week before, was very much on his Yanez's mind, and he was keeping a close eye on the store. He saw a white car pass and thought the driver appeared to match the description of one of the robbers. But when the agents asked Yanez in the interview to elaborate, he couldn't offer many details. He wasn't sure about height, weight or even gender. One had cornrows or dreadlocks. One had a hat on.
"And then just kind of distinct facial features with like a kind of like a wide set nose," he said.
Yanez followed closely behind the vehicle to run the license plate. He decided to pull the car over and signaled to his partner, Joseph Kauser, that he may need backup.
He was concerned enough about the driver being a robbery suspect to wait to pull the car over in a place away from foot traffic. When he approached, he smelled burnt marijuana, he told the agents. He didn't tell this to the driver because, "I didn't want to scare him or have him react in a defensive manner," so he told Castile he had a busted taillight.
Yanez said Castile wouldn't look him in the eye and was mumbling. He asked Castile for his license, and as Castle reached down he said he had a firearm, Yanez told the agents. Yanez said he repeatedly told him not to reach for the gun. "It appeared to me that he had no regard to what I was saying. He didn't care what I was saying. He still reached down."
Yanez recalled that Castile kept his left hand on the steering wheel, and the placement of his shoulder blocked Yanez's sightline to Castile's right hand. It was at this time that he feared Castile may be reaching for the gun in his waistband or perhaps between the seats. He wondered if Castile may have kept the gun for protection from a drug dealer or someone trying to "rip" from him.
"And at that point I was scared and I was in fear for my life and my partner's life," he told the agents. "And for the little girl in the back and the front seat passenger and he dropped his hand down and I can't remember what I was telling him but I was telling him something as his hand went down I think."
He thought he saw Castile grab something and pull it away from his right thigh. "I know he had an object _ and it was dark," he said. He thought he saw a gun.
"As that was happening, as he was pulling at, out his hand I thought, I was gonna die and I thought if he's, if he has the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the 5-year-old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing then what, what care does he give about me?"
He thought the barrel was "coming out." He thought it was "big."
"To me it just looked big and apparent that he's going to shoot you, he's going to kill you. This is your suspect from the robbery."
Then he fired.
At the time of the interview, he couldn't remember squeezing off the first few shots, or how many times he shot. He saw one round hit Castile in the arm, and Castile's glasses fly from his face. "I remember smelling the gun smoke and the bright flashes from the muzzle. And then I heard, a couple pops from my firearm."
He said he tried to point the gun away from the little girl in the back seat. He heard her screaming. "I acknowledged the little girl first because I wanted her to be safe."
In her interview with Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigators, Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, described Yanez as "jittery" during the traffic stop. She said Castile was trying to get to his wallet in his back pocket to get his license. She said Castile was trying to do things at the same time _ get his license and registration, but also put his hands in the air (Yanez never actually ordered Castile to put his hands in the air).
"And he shot, pop, pop, pop, pop. And why did it take for that many times for him to shoot somebody? Blatantly, In front of two women like that? For no apparent reason because he was havin' hard times gettin' to his license and registration."
She said Castile was like a father to her 4-year-old daughter, who was in the back seat during the shooting.
"There is no coming back from this," she said about her daughter.
Reynolds told the investigators that marijuana was in Castile's car, but that it was hers. She said Castile carried a gun to protect himself and his family. She also worried about investigators destroying evidence.
"They kill, he killed him. So now what? Where do we go from here? Because there's gonna be lawsuits in order. There's discrimination in, there's racism. There's a lot of things that's gonna play now because of this."
Toward the end of the interview, one of the investigators told Reynolds that Castile had died.
"He took him away from us," she said, crying. "It's not fair. It's not fair. Please get me out of here."
The dashcam video shows how the routine traffic stop turns deadly in about a minute.
The sequence of events went as follows:
_9:05 p.m.: Castile's Oldsmobile comes to a complete stop.
_9:05:15 p.m. to 9:05:22 p.m.: Yanez approaches the driver's window. Castile is buckled in his seat belt.
_9:05:22 p.m. to 9:05:38 p.m.: Yanez greets Castile and tells him that the interior brake light on his back seat is not working.
_9:05:33 p.m.: Yanez's partner, Officer Joseph Kauser, approaches the rear passenger side of Castile's car.
_9:05:38 p.m.: Yanez asks Castile for his driver's license and proof of insurance.
_9:05:48 p.m. to 9:05:52 p.m.: Castile gives Yanez the insurance information, which the officer inspects and tucks into his breast pocket.
_9:05:52 p.m. to 9:05:55 p.m.: "Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me," Castile voluntarily tells Yanez.
The officer interrupts Castile before he can finish.
"OK," Yanez says as he places his right hand on his holstered gun.
_9:05:55 p.m. to 9:06:02 p.m.: "OK, don't reach for it, then," Yanez says.
Castile's response is partly inaudible. Yanez interrupts him.
"Don't pull it out," Yanez says.
"I'm not pulling it out," Castile says.
"He's not pulling it out," Reynolds says.
Yanez screams, "Don't pull it out!"
The officer pulls his own gun with his right hand while he reaches inside the driver's side window with his left hand. Yanez removes his left hand and fires seven shots. Castile is struck by five rounds, two of them tear through his heart.
_9:06:03 p.m. to 9:06:05 p.m.: "You just killed my boyfriend!" yells Reynolds, from the front passenger seat.
"I wasn't reaching for it," Castile says as he moans.
_9:06:05 p.m. to 9:06:09 p.m.: "He wasn't reaching for it!" Reynolds says.
"Don't pull it out!" Yanez screams, interrupting Reynolds.
"He wasn't," Reynolds responds.
"Don't move!" Yanez yells. "(Expletive)!"
The dashcam video also shows Reynolds' daughter, then 4, exiting the back passenger door on her own. Kauser quickly scoops up the girl.
An officer arrives and order Reynolds out of the car as she live streams the aftermath on Facebook in a video that would go on to draw millions of viewers worldwide. Several other officers soon arrive, and two eventually pull Castile out of the car and onto the pavement where they begin CPR.
Yanez walks off screen at one point, and begins recounting the incident to his supervisor. The conversation is recorded through his microphone but is not filmed on the dashcam.
