MINNEAPOLIS—A suburban St. Paul police officer who killed a black driver pulled the man over in part because he believed he resembled a suspect in a robbery, his attorney said.
Philando Castile had no felony record and authorities have not said he was wanted in any crime. But Officer Jeronimo Yanez thought Philando Castile looked like someone police had been seeking in a recent robbery, Minneapolis attorney Thomas Kelly told the Star Tribune on Sunday.
“All he had to have was reasonable suspicion to pull him over,” Kelly told the newspaper.
Investigators have declined to say what led up to last week’s shooting of the 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor, whose death helped spark protests around the nation, including one in Dallas in which five police officers were killed and several more were wounded.
Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, was in the vehicle. She has said Castile was shot several times while reaching for his wallet, after telling the officer he had a gun and a permit to carry it. Reynolds live-streamed the gruesome aftermath of the Wednesday shooting on Facebook.
Kelly told The Associated Press on Saturday that Yanez was reacting to the seeing that gun, not Castile’s race, when he drew his own weapon. The attorney did not immediately return messages left early Monday.
Albert Goins, a Minneapolis attorney who has worked with Castile’s family, said that if Yanez and the officer with him, Joseph Kauser, believed they were pulling over a suspect in a violent crime, they should not have approached the car like a normal traffic stop. They should have been following protocols to take cover and order the driver and passengers out of the car by gunpoint, he said.
“Either (Castile) was a robbery suspect and (Yanez) didn’t follow the procedures for a felony stop, or (Castile) was not a robbery suspect and (Yanez) shot a man because he stood at his window getting his information,” Goins said.
