The cop who was acquitted for killing Philando Castile, a legal gun owner, in a Minnesota traffic stop has revealed what it was that made him fear his life that day.
Former Officer Jeronimo Yanez told investigators a day after the shooting last July that he was “hit with a odor of burning marijuana.” This is the reason why Yanez blasted Castile with seven bullets. Seven.
He said, “I thought, I was gonna die 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 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.”
As for the legal gun that was in Castile’s possession, he said, “Being that … the inside of the vehicle smelled like marijuana um I didn’t know if he was keeping it on him for protection, for, from a, a drug dealer or anything like that.”
Castile’s shooting aftermath was livestreamed by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds on Facebook Live.
