Woman Livestreams Police Officer Fatally Shooting Boyfriend

Warning: Distressing footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7h2j0n18jg

Shocking footage has emerged of a 32-year-old man being shot by a police officer during an apparent traffic stop in Minnesota.

The aftermath of the shooting was captured on Facebook Live by Lavish Reynolds and shows her boyfriend, Philando Castile, bleeding in the driver’s seat as an officer continues to point his firearm, CNN reports.

She tells viewers that she and Castile were pulled over for a busted tail light.

YouTube

Reynolds claims the officer asked Castile, a cafeteria supervisor at a school in St Paul, to show his license, but then shot him four times while he reached for it.

As she talks, she moves the camera across to show Castile, bleeding and losing consciousness, and then back to the officer, who can still be seen pointing his gun.

She says in the livestream:

We got pulled over for a busted taillight in the back. The police just, just…he’s covered.

He’s licensed to carry. He was trying to get out his ID and his wallet out his pocket, and he let the officer know that he had a firearm, and he was reaching for his wallet, and the officer just shot him in his arm.

An audibly distressed police officer can be heard yelling outside the car: “I told him not to reach for it, I told him to get his hands up.”

About sixty seconds into the video, Castile appears to stop moving.

Lavish says to the camera:

Oh my God, please don’t tell me he’s dead. Please don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that.

You shot four bullets into him, sir,” she continues, “He was just getting his license and registration, sir.

They killed my boyfriend.

YouTube

During the 10-minute video, Reynolds was ordered out of her vehicle by a group of police officers, handcuffed, and placed in the back of a squad car with her daughter, who witnessed the shooting from the back seat. At one point in the video, the child tells her mother: “It’s OK. I’m right here with you.”

The officer has since been put on administrative leave, according to the Independent.

As news of the footage spread through social media, users took Twitter to express their grief over the contents of Reynolds’ video.

Crowds of protesters also turned up outside Governor Mark Dayton’s residence in Saint Paul demanding for him to ‘wake up’ and speak to them. They shouted ‘no Justice, no Peace’ and chanted Philando Castile’s name over and over.

The incident comes hours after the US Justice Department said it had opened an investigation into two police officers fatally shooting a black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Tuesday.

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