Philando Castile: The Man, The Legacy, The Injustice

On July sixth, 2016, something tragic and incredibly heartbreaking happened in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. News of this terrible ordeal traveled like wildfire and eventually brought the whole state, some would even argue the whole country, to its knees.

It all starts with Philando Divall Castile. Philando was thirty-two years old at the time of this case. Originally from St Louis, Missouri, Philando had since moved to Robbinsdale, where he worked for the Saint Paul Public School District. Philando was in nutrition services, meaning that he would help monitor and adapt school meals and prep to tailor to children’s needs, but that wasn’t all that he did. Philando was known to quietly pay for student’s meals at school, doing his best to make sure that no child went home hungry at the end of the day.

And on the evening of July sixth, 2016, he was on his way back from an activity that was very in tune with his daily profession. Earlier, he’d been and gotten his hair cut. Then he’d had dinner with his sister and then he’d picked up his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, to go and do the grocery shopping. Together with them that evening, in the backseat of the car, was Diamond’s four-year-old daughter.

As the evening drew on, Philando caught sight of blue lights in his rearview mirror. He pulled over to the side of the street, and he waited as two officers approached the car from behind.

On the one side, moving towards Diamond, was Joseph Kauser. On the other, making his way to Philando, was Jeronimo Yanez. The two officers had been friends for a long time, and had even graduated from the police academy at Minnesota State University together. Now they worked the same beat and were unofficially considered to be each other’s partners.

Around nine o’clock that evening, another police officer radioed in that he was planning on pulling over Philando’s car because Philando looked like a suspect in a robbery that had occurred in the area a few days before. After radioing back and forth, it was decided that Jeronimo and Joseph would be the ones to conduct the traffic stop.

Police officers in Saint Paul didn’t wear body cams at the time that Philando was pulling his car over to the side of the road, but what happened next was captured forever in the dash cam of the police cruiser. 

It would be a harrowing forty-second encounter that would forever shape and change so many lives.

Jeronimo stood talking with Philando through the driver’s side window and asked for his license and registration. After taking a quick, passing glance at Philando’s license, Jeronimo then slipped it into the front pocket of his shirt and went on talking with Philando.

It was then, calmly and respectfully, that Philando said: “Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me.”

Philando was licensed to own and carry a firearm and now, with two police officers staring into his car with his girlfriend and a four-year-old child in there with him, Philando thought it was best to inform them that he had a weapon before there was a misunderstanding.

But before Philando could even finish his sentence, Jeronimo interrupted him.

“OK,” he is recorded as saying, just like the dash cam footage shows him reach a hand for the holster of his own gun. “Okay, don’t reach for it, then… don’t pull it out.”

In mere seconds, Jeronimo’s composure began quickly changing.

“I’m not pulling it out,” Philando responds and within seconds his statement is confirmed by Diamond, who can be heard saying that Philando wasn’t reaching for his weapon.

Jeronimo repeated, raising his voice, "Don't pull it out!" as he quickly pulled his own gun with his right hand and reached inside the driver's window with his left hand. Diamond screamed, "No!" Jeronimo removed his left arm from the car and rapidly fired seven shots in the direction of Philando. Diamond yelled, "You just killed my boyfriend!"

The scene quickly devolved into absolute chaos. In between the shots, and in the following empty silence, Diamond began to scream, yelling at Jeronimo that he had just killed Philando.

Philando can also be heard speaking, his voice laced with a pained moan, “I wasn’t reaching for it.”

Now, in complete terror, Jeronimo begins shouting again. He first loudly proclaimed that Philando had been reaching for his weapon before shouting and warning Philando not to pull out his weapon once again. Philando stays silent, but Diamond can be heard defending her boyfriend, saying once again that he had never been reaching for his gun.

In less than a minute, what seemed like a routine traffic stop had devolved into a bloody scene of absolute carnage.

Jeronimo had fired seven shots at Philando at point-blank range. Five of those shots hit him, two of which  pierced his heart.

Most likely in a panic, and in fear for her own and her daughter’s life, Diamond picked up her phone and began livestreaming the events unfolding around her. She captured Philando, slumped over and moaning in the seat beside her. In the recording, Jeronimo can be heard shouting and swearing as Diamond says: “You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration.”

Then overlapping each other, Jeronimo can be heard shouting: “I told him not to reach for it! I told him to get his hand open!” while Diamond pleads: “Please don’t tell me he’s dead.”

Still recording, Diamond is then ordered out of the vehicle, where she is forced to the ground and handcuffed. She loses her phone in the scuffle, which continues to film from the ground but no longer shows us exactly who is speaking.

But dash cams and cameras inside the police cruiser then captured the heartbreaking and chilling voice of a child. Diamond’s four-year-old daughter, who’d been removed from Philando’s vehicle and placed inside the cruiser, begs her mother to stay quiet.

“Mom, please stop cussing and screaming ‘cause I don’t want you to get shooted.”

Diamond claimed that in the hours following the shooting, she was treated like a criminal. Still handcuffed, Diamond was escorted back to the police station, where she was questioned throughout the night. She wasn’t released until five o’clock the following morning.

She also claimed that in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, none of the officers at the scene, or the ones who flocked there after, checked to see if Philando was still alive.

Because he was.

After five direct hits, two of which had pierced his heart, Philando was still in the car, clinging to life. It was only when first responders arrived at the scene that anyone realized that Philando was still alive and breathing. He was rushed to hospital, but by then it was, unfortunately, too late. He died about twenty minutes later.

In less than twenty-four hours, his story would spread across the country and ignite a feeling of anger and betrayal that wouldn’t be easily put out. In half a day, Diamond’s recording would get 2.5 million views and protestors began to gather at the scene of the shooting.

For two days the people of St Paul stood together in peaceful protests and vigils, but by July ninth, their anger had bubbled over into sour fury. Things turned violent. Twenty-one officers were injured as protestors threw rocks, bottles and molotov cocktails. Law enforcement responded with pepper spray, tear gas and over 102 arrests. Highways and entire city blocks came to a standstill, but what the people really wanted was justice.

Jeronimo Yanez retold his version of events, trying his very best to clear his name and his image. He claimed that he had been in fear of his own life. His justification for being so was that Philando had been abusing Diamond’s four-year-old daughter.

“I thought, I was gonna die,” transcripts from his interview with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension read. “And I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five-year-old girl and… risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke… then what… care does he give about me?”

Jeronimo and his lawyers tried to flip the script and blamed everything on Philando.

But an investigation into the incident brought second-degree manslaughter charges against Jeronimo. 

After five days in court, he was acquitted of all charges. He was, however, immediately fired from the police department, but only after he received almost 49,000 dollars in a severance agreement. 

The entire debacle had been just one more slap in the face for Philando’s family and for Diamond. Determined to see some sort of justice done, they filed wrongful death lawsuits against the city and won about 3.8 million dollars.

This was little compensation for the damage done to all of them that day, especially for those who had been in the car and witnessed the shooting firsthand.

But from it has sprouted some good that, perhaps, captures the true essence of Philando Castile.

The school he’d once worked at set up the Philando Castile Memorial Scholarship in his honor, but that was only the beginning. After that came the Philando Castile Relief Foundation, a charity that tries to address gun violence but also pays off students’ school lunch debts, just like Philando had been doing himself. Part of their funding comes directly from the Castile family themselves and will continue to do so in the future.