ST PAUL, Minnesota--The second fatal police shooting of a black man in two days sparked outrage in the United States on Thursday, this one particularly chilling because the victim's girlfriend posted live video on the internet of the bloody scene minutes afterward.
The killing of Philando Castile, 32, who was shot by a police officer after a traffic stop on Wednesday evening, prompted Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton to order a state investigation.
"Would this have happened if the driver and the passengers were white? I don't think it would have," Dayton told reporters on Thursday. "So I'm forced to confront that this kind of racism exists, and it's incumbent upon all of us to vow and ensure that it doesn't happen and doesn't continue to happen."
Castile's death occurred within a day of the shooting of 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Sterling was killed during an altercation with two white police officers. Graphic video of that incident triggered protests and an outcry on social media.
Dayton called for the U.S. Department of Justice to open its own investigation, but the department said on Thursday it would assist the state investigation as necessary. The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the Baton Rouge shooting.
Castile's girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, videotaped the minutes immediately following his shooting and posted it on Facebook Live. Castile, who was driving, was shot with Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter in the car. The graphic video showed blood oozing through Castile's shirt as he appeared to lose consciousness.
President Barack Obama said the killings were tragedies. "All of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They're symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system," he said in remarks after arriving in Poland.
The use of force by police against African-Americans in cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore and New York has sparked periodic and sometimes violent protests in the past two years, and has spawned a movement called Black Lives Matter. Anger has intensified when the officers involved in such incidents have been acquitted or not charged at all.
Reynolds' video showed a police officer outside the car pointing a gun. Reynolds described what was going on, sometimes speaking calmly to the police officer, sometimes with her voice rising as she feared Castile was dying.
Reynolds said Castile was shot after police pulled their car over, citing a broken tail light. "Nothing within his body language said 'Kill me, I want to be dead,'" she said on Thursday.
Dozens of protesters gathered at the governor's mansion in St. Paul, about 10 miles (15 km) southeast of the scene of the incident, where the governor spoke at a news conference with Reynolds and civil rights activists. When Reynolds spoke earlier in the day, people shouted "murder," and called for the arrest of the police officer involved.
"All of these killings of young black men, I am ready to take my grandson somewhere else," said one protester, Chanell Peaches Wall, 59, who said she recently moved to the area from Tennessee.
She held a placard that said "He was my son too" on one side and "No justice, no peace" on the other.
"I was already fuming when I woke up this morning over Baton Rouge, but for it happen here again just pushed me right over the edge," said truck driver Thomas Michaels, 42, who was among the protesters in St. Paul. "We live in a racist society where black lives don't matter, my kids lives don't matter and I'm sick of it. I don't even know if it can be fixed."
Another protester, retail worker Tanya McDonald, 28, said: "What gets me is how many people are failing to see that this is happening almost every day. We're dying, we're being killed off by people hiding behind a badge and no one's doing anything to stop it."
A statement on the website of the City of Falcon Heights, where the shooting occurred, said a Saint Anthony Village police officer discharged his gun during a traffic stop at about 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday evening, and the unidentified driver later died at Hennepin County Medical Center. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner said that Castile died from multiple gunshot wounds at 9:37 p.m. at Hennepin County Medical Center and his death was a homicide.
It said the officer involved had been placed on paid administrative leave, as is standard procedure for Falcon Heights, which is about 6 miles (10 km) northeast of downtown Minneapolis. The ethnicity of the police officer was not clear. Attempts to reach the police department for further comment were unsuccessful.
