New video: ‘ Mom ... I don’t want you to get shooted’
After Castile shooting, girl begs mother to calm down
Dramatic squad car video from moments after a suburban Minneapolis police officer fatally shot Philando Castile shows the 4- year- old daughter of his girlfriend begging her mother to stop cursing so she won’t be shot.
“Mom, please stop cussing and screaming cause I don’t want you to get shooted,” the girl says to Diamond Reynolds, who is handcuffed next to her child in the back of the squad car. Reynolds asks for a kiss, then her daughter tells Reynolds that “I can keep you safe.”
Reynolds says she can’t believe Castile was shot, and when the child cries, Reynolds says she wants to get out of the handcuffs.
“No, please don’t. I don’t want you to get shooted,” the child cries out. After more reassurance from Reynolds, the child adds: “Don’t take them off. If you take them off you get everything started.
“I wish this town was safer,” the girl says. “I don’t want it to be like this anymore.”
Reynolds’ response: “Tell that to the police, OK? When they come, tell them that you wish that they didn’t have to kill people.”
Castile, 32, was fatally shot at a traffic stop in July 2016 by St. Anthony, Minn., police officer Jeronimo Yanez. Last week a jury acquitted Yanez, 29, of manslaughter and other charges in the case, setting off a weekend of protests.
Castile was pulled over for a broken tail light, but radio transmissions later revealed Yanez thought Castile resembled a suspect in a convenience store robbery days earlier.
Reynolds posted Facebook live video from the scene in the chaotic moments immediately following the shooting.
Another video, from an officer’s dash cam video, shows the shooting, and was key evidence in the trial. That video shows the moment Yanez begins following Castile’s car, the shooting and the lifesaving efforts that followed.
Yanez was wearing a wireless microphone, which captured the exchange between him and Castile that ends in seven gunshots in a matter of seconds.