MINNEAPOLIS _ Diamond Reynolds wiped away tears as she recounted the night her boyfriend Philando Castile was shot by Officer Jeronimo Yanez. As Castile lay dying in the seat next to her, she explained why she turned on Facebook Live.
"Because I know that people are not protected against the police and I wanted to make sure that if I were to die in front of my daughter, people would know the truth."
Reynolds resumed her testimony Tuesday in the trial for Yanez, a St. Anthony police officer who is charged with manslaughter in Castile's July 2016 death. Defense attorney Earl Gray aggressively cross-examined Reynolds in an attempt to raise doubts about her credibility, piercing through the composure she previously showed under questioning by the prosecution.
Yanez's partner that night, Officer Joseph Kauser, also took the stand while the prosecution repeatedly played the squad car dashcam video from the night, showing the jury how quickly the routine traffic stop became a fatal shooting.
Kauser described the events leading up to the stop, that Castile matched the description of a suspect who had a gun in a robbery four days earlier. Yanez radioed for back up. After pulling Castile over, Yanez walked up to the driver's side of the car, while Kauser walked on the sidewalk eyeing Reynolds and her daughter in the back seat.
The video showed that after showing his registration, Castile told Yanez he had a gun.
"OK, don't reach for it then," Yanez said.
"Don't pull it out," he said again, raising his voice.
"I'm not pulling it out," Castile tells him.
"He's not pulling it out," Reynolds quickly adds.
"Don't pull it out," Yanez shouts.
And then he fired seven shots, about six seconds after Castile told Yanez he had a gun.
Kauser said he felt Yanez was right to shoot Castile if he saw him reaching for a gun and failed to follow orders to stop.
"I think he followed protocol," Kauser said. "I trust him as a partner and he did what he's supposed to do in that situation."
But whether Yanez actually saw Castile reach for a gun was left unclear. Despite at first telling investigators that she thought Castile was reaching for his wallet, Reynolds told the jury he was reaching for a seat belt.
Prosecutor Jeffrey Paulsen challenged Kauser on what he saw.
"I don't know what he was reaching for," Kauser acknowledged.
"Exactly," Paulsen responded.
The jury also watched video of Yanez responding to questions from a supervising officer after the shooting that night, at times contradicting the orders he gave to Castile.
"I don't know where the gun was," Yanez told the officer at one point. At another: "I told him to get his hands off of it." Then a few seconds later: "I told him to take his (expletive) hand off the gun."
Paulsen also grilled Kauser on St. Anthony police's use-of-force policy and traffic stop protocol, asking if officers should give a warning before using deadly force.
"If feasible, you should give a warning," Kauser said.
Should officers order people to stop moving in suspicious situations, Paulsen asked.
"It's circumstantial," Kauser said.
"How about the word 'freeze!' " Paulsen said with a loud and dramatic flourish.
Kauser said he had never heard the order used once in his law enforcement career.
"That's a Hollywood thing," the officer said as the laughter rippled across the courtroom.
During morning testimony, Reynolds broke down when asked to describe Yanez in the courtroom and what he was wearing. Then when prosecutor Clayton Robinson asked if she recalled Castile's last words, she regained her composure and steadily replied, "I can't breathe."
But she found herself answering for her marijuana use and contradictory statements when Gray began cross-examining her about three separate interviews she gave to law enforcement and prosecutors in the case on July 6, 2016; May 5 and May 31. She said that she smoked weed daily with Castile, and after he was shot first realized that there was marijuana on the floor of the front passenger side of the car.
"When I kicked it and heard something under my seat," she said. "It was already on the floor."
"So your testimony is you kicked it under the seat?" Gray asked a few questions later.
"No," she replied, raising her voice, appearing to get agitated with Gray's line of questioning. "I felt it under the seat."
Yanez, 29, is charged with second-degree manslaughter for shooting Castile, 32, shortly after 9 p.m. on July 6, and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm for endangering Reynolds and her daughter, then 4, who were in the car.
Gray peppered Reynolds with questions about her drug use with Castile, why she left Castile in the car earlier that night while she went grocery shopping, and why she told demonstrators the day after that she was deprived of food and water while police questioned her after the shooting.
While being questioned by the prosecution, Reynolds said Castile was reaching for his seat belt after the traffic stop. Gray seized on that, saying it contradicted earlier statements she gave to police and prosecutors that she believed her boyfriend was reaching for his wallet.
"Well, they twist my words around," she said.
When Gray challenged her whether it was police and prosecutors who twisted her words, she replied, "I'm saying, I got my words twisted."
Prosecutors started the morning playing the squad car video of Yanez's traffic stop, at first with the sound off. Reynolds' soft cries over the speaker system were the only sounds that could be heard in the packed but silent courtroom.
Gray continued his relentless cross-examination, asking Reynolds if in her Facebook Live video she said that Castile had his hands in the air.
Reynolds confirmed Gray's account of her narration.
"He didn't have his hands up at any time during the stop, did he?" Gray asked.
"That is correct," she said.
Gray tried to show that in addition to giving the public, police and prosecution inconsistent statements about the shooting and investigation, Reynolds may have tried to shield Castile from any liability for 6 grams of marijuana found in the car that day. Castile's marijuana use has featured prominently in the defense's argument that he was culpably negligent in his own death because he was intoxicated and unable to follow Yanez's directions.
Reynolds told Gray she never purchased marijuana, but later admitted that after the shooting, she told investigators the marijuana in the car came from her.
Gray asked if in a May 5 interview she said that Castile accompanied her to purchase the marijuana.
"That is correct," she said.
Gray then asked if in a May 31 interview she told prosecutors that Castile purchased the drug alone.
Yes, she answered.
Reynolds' interpretation of Castile's arm movement before he was shot was also heavily scrutinized by the defense, which noted that she first said he was reaching for a wallet in his left rear pocket and then said on May 31 that he was reaching to unbuckle the seat belt to his right. The defense maintains that Yanez saw Castile's hand on a gun.
Yanez told investigators after the shooting that Castile canted the left side of his body up as he reached between his right thigh and the car's center console.
Castile was reaching for his wallet but had trouble with his seat belt, Reynolds eventually said after Gray kept pressing the issue. Gray asked Reynolds why she didn't share the same information with investigators on July 6.
"I was confused ...," she said of the emotions that overcame her after the shooting. "It all happened so fast."
Medics who arrived at the scene found and removed a handgun from Castile's right front shorts pocket. Prosecutors have said it's unclear where Castile kept his wallet, which was removed after he arrived at the hospital.
Reynolds later told Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Clayton Robinson that Castile kept his wallet in his right rear pocket.
