The Minnesota police officer who was recently acquitted for shooting and killing Philando Castile at a traffic stop last summer told state investigators that it was the smell of marijuana that made him fear for his life. The interview transcript was released Tuesday along with graphic video footage from a police dashcam showing the shooting of Castile, according to the New York Daily News.
In this interview, Officer Jeronimo Yanez said that Castile’s willingness to smoke marijuana in front of his then 4-year-old daughter and girlfriend made him believe Castile could be dangerous.
“I thought I was gonna die and I thought [if he has] the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the five-year-old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front-seat passenger doing the same thing then what, what care does he give about me?” Yanez said.
Yanez also said Castile’s “wide set nose” appeared to match an armed robbery suspect’s profile, making him think Castile might have had the gun for a criminal reason. Castile had a legal permit to carry the gun.
The dashcam footage matches the Facebook Live video posted by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, in which you can hear Castile clearly say, “I do have a firearm on me” and then assuring Yanez that he wasn’t pulling it out. Despite this, Yanez fired seven bullets into the vehicle and killed Castile. It took less than a minute for the encounter to turn deadly.
Yanez was acquitted of the murder earlier this week, causing outrage.