Jeronimo Yanez, the police officer who killed 32-year-old black motorist Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota on July 6, 2016, has been found not guilty of second-degree manslaughter and not guilty of two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm today (June 16), CBS News reports.
Yanez shot Castile five times during a traffic stop in the St. Paul suburb, just seconds after Castile told the officer that he was carrying a gun. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, streamed the victim’s lifeless, blood-covered body on Facebook Live, showing Yanez with his gun still pointed at Castile.
Defense attorneys argued the 29-year-old Latino officer was scared for his life and was justified in the shooting. Prosecutors disputed, saying Yanez never saw a gun and had several options than shooting an unarmed Castile, who they insisted never was a threat to the officer.
The verdict came after five days of jury deliberation in the case. If found guilty, the officer could have faced up to 10 years in prison.
The day before Castile’s killing by a Minnesota police office, another black man, Alton Sterling, was shot and killed by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. No officers were charged in his death.
On July 5, 2016, 37-year-old Sterling was shot several times at close range while held down on the ground by two white Baton Rouge Police Department officers. Police were responding to a report that a man in a red shirt was selling CDs, and that he had used a gun to threaten someone outside a convenience store. The shooting was recorded by multiple bystanders and led to protests in Baton Rouge and a request for a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
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