Crime & Safety
Philando Castile Video: 'I Don't Want You To Get Shooted,' Little Girl Cries In Crushing New Cop Footage
The latest police footage released in the Philando Castile case isn't as bloody, but it's just as devastating.
FALCON HEIGHTS, MN — The latest cop footage released in the case of Philando Castile, the young black man shot dead at close range last summer by a St. Anthony police officer in front of his fiancee Diamond Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter Dae’Anna, shows a heartbreaking exchange between Reynolds and the little girl right after Castile was killed. (Video below.)
When Reynolds, handcuffed, curses loudly in the back seat of a St. Anthony cop car, the 4-year-old tells her mother through tears: "Mom, please stop cussing and screaming, because I don't want you to get shooted!"
And when Reynolds struggles with the cuffs, her daughter again cries: "No, please don't! I don't want you to get shooted!"
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Diamond Reynolds, handcuffed: "Fuck!!!!" Her daughter: "Please don't scream because I don't want you to get shooted ... I can keep you safe" pic.twitter.com/Zex62ZOQN0
— Tony Webster (@webster) June 21, 2017
"I could keep you safe," Dae’Anna tells her mom in the new footage.
And later, looking out the window of the police vehicle, the 4-year-old says: "I wish this town was safer."
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She says she prays they'll find a "better town that's safer" with "flowers everywhere, and apple trees" — and "no more police and no more shootings."
Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who killed Castile, was found not guilty last Friday of all charges relating to Castile's death.
The devastating new footage of Castile's fiancee and her traumatized daughter could be found buried within a data dump posted online Tuesday by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, in response to a public records request by independent journalist Tony Webster.
Here's the full, hour-and-a-half video of Reynolds and her daughter in the back of the squad car:
"I'm just going to miss him," Dae’Anna says of Castile as she waits in the cop car with her mom. "He was a good, loving man that we always needed. He used to pick me up from school. He was just a good guy."
To which the distraught woman replies: "Don't say 'was,' say 'he is,' because he's still alive, Dae’Anna. He's still alive, OK?"
Tuesday's data dump also included bloody crime-scene photos and dash cam footage of the deadly traffic stop. They're the latest in a stream of hard-to-stomach images depicting Castile's roadside police killing in a Minnesota suburb — beginning, of course, with the now-famous Facebook Live video streamed by Reynolds from the scene, which allowed the world to watch Castile die from police bullets in real time.
Officer Yanez pulled the family over for a busted tail light on July 6, 2016. Nauseating police video released this week showed Castile calmly telling the officer during the traffic stop that he was licensed to carry a firearm and that he had a gun in his pocket.
"OK, don't reach for it then, don't pull it out," the officer said — then began shooting Castile.
"I wasn't reaching," Castile said as he died.
This story has been updated. Police footage courtesy of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension
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