Girlfriend of man shot by police gets deal
Woman who live-streamed Philando Castile shooting agrees to $800K settlement
Diamond Reynolds, who broadcast to the world what happened after a Minnesota police officer fatally shot her boyfriend, Philando Castile, has agreed to a settlement worth $800,000 (U.S.), authorities announced.
This agreement comes months after the officer, Jeronimo Yanez, was acquitted in a high-profile trial. He was subsequently dismissed from his police force in St. Anthony, Minn., and that city reached a settlement with Castile’s family.
Castile was one of at least 963 people fatally shot by police officers in the U.S. last year, and his death became among the most well-known due to the dramatic footage.
His Oldsmobile was pulled over on July 6, 2016, in a suburb near Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yanez said he had stopped him for a broken tail light, but the officer said later he thought Castile looked like the suspect in a recent robbery. After Castile alerted Yanez that he had a gun in the car, the stop quickly shifted. Yanez fired into the car, striking Castile, and said afterward that he believed Castile was reaching for his gun.
Reynolds, sitting in the passenger seat with her 4-year-old daughter seated behind her, argued that Castile was not reaching for his weapon. She began to livestream what was happening on Facebook Live, in footage that rocketed around the world.