The police officer involved in the July shooting death of a black man in a St. Paul, Minn., suburb has been charged with manslaughter.
St. Anthony Police Department officer Jeronimo Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced early Wednesday. Yanez will also be charged with two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm, Choi said.
Philando Castile, 32, was pulled over in a St. Paul suburb on July 6 for a traffic stop. His girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter were in the car at the time. The immediate aftermath of the shooting by Yanez was live-streamed on Facebook by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, which soon went viral and led to protests in the area.
According to Reynolds, Castile told Yanez he was licensed to carry a weapon and had one on him when asked for his license and registration.
“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,” Reynolds said. Castile later died at a nearby hospital, roughly 20 minutes after the initial shooting.
Both Yanez and his partner, Officer Joseph Kauser, were put on leave after the shooting.
According to Choi, Yanez’s use of deadly force was unjustified. Though Castile was armed, he “never removed or tried to remove” the gun he had in his pocket, the county attorney said.
“No reasonable officer would have used deadly force under these circumstances,” Choi told reporters Wednesday. Choi said he chose to make the decision himself about charging Yanez rather than turning the case over to a grand jury.
There have been calls for the Justice Department to conduct its own investigation into the shooting. But rather than do that, the agency has said it “stands ready to provide assistance” to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension during its probe.
The shooting of Castile came during a bloody few days in July.
Before Castile was shot, Alton Sterling was fatally shot by an officer in Baton Rouge. At a protest against police shootings a day later, five officers were ambushed and killed in Dallas. Tree more officers were killed in an ambush later that month in Baton Rouge.
