The black man who was fatally shot by a police officer during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota last week has roots in St. Louis.
On July 6, Philando Castile, 32, was shot multiple times in front of his fiancée and her four-year-old daughter by St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez. The aftermath of the shooting was livestreamed in a gut-wrenching Facebook Live video by Castile’s fiancée, Diamond Reynolds.
“He let the officer know he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm,” Reynolds said in the livestream. “You just shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration.”
As she calmly spoke to the officer, he continued to wave the gun at her and the dying Castile and utter curses.
Castile was a nutrition services supervisor at J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School. He was appointed to the supervisor position two years ago and has worked in Saint Paul Public Schools since he was 19, according to a statement by district.
“He was smart, over-qualified. He was quiet, respectful, and kind,” an unidentified coworker said in the district statement.
“I knew him as warm and funny; he called me his ‘wing man.’ He wore a shirt and tie to his supervisor interview and said his goal was to one day ‘sit on the other side of this table.’”
The St. Anthony Police Department – which patrols Falcon Heights, where the incident occurred – originally reported that Castile was pulled over for a broken tail light. Later police claimed that Yanez thought Castile looked like a robbery suspect who was reported as having “a wide-set nose.”
Long before Castile became a role model to public school students in St. Paul, he was just a boy in St. Louis. Castile’s aunt, Shirley Graves, who is a St. Louis resident, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Castile moved out of St. Louis when he was a boy and that she had last seen him a few years ago at a family reunion here.
Graves and Castile’s other St. Louis relatives could not be reached for comment by press time.
Castile’s death happened just 24 hours after a viral video emerged of Alton Sterling, a black man selling CDs on the street, who was fatally shot by a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while officers had him pinned to the ground.
Castile’s sister Allysza Castile said that Philando saw that video, in the brief time he would live longer than Sterling, and discussed it with her. She told him that she couldn’t bear to watch the man shot dead.
“I haven’t watched the video of this man being killed by police and I will not because it will literally break my heart and I’m so tired of seeing this happen to my PEOPLE for no reason!” she posted on Facebook, while her brother was still alive. “All these killings caught (on) camera and still no justice – it makes me sick!”
This story is published as part of a partnership between The St. Louis American and The Huffington Post.
