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Sunday, June 18, 2017

Who killed Philando Castile?


Philando Castile's death was ruled a homicide. But no one killed him.

On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile was shot by Jeronimo Yanez, in  St. Paul, Minnesota. On June 16, 2017, Yanez was acquitted of all related charges (one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm).

Castile was shot while stopped for a traffic violation. It was the 53rd time he had been pulled over in 14 years. Apparently, 52 is the limit to the number of times you can tempt fate by driving while black in a racist society.

When asked for his license and registration, Castile told the officer he was licensed to carry a weapon and had one in his pants pocket. Shortly thereafter he was shot seven times.

Castile has been lauded as a family man, a caring role model, a dedicated school worker. But even if he wasn't, should he be dead?

Where is the NRA for someone like Philando Castile? Were not his 2nd Amendment right violated in the extreme?

How many hours of videos have we seen? And how many countless times do they represent when there was no video?

How many of these deaths will it take until we've had enough?  How many until the Church at large will acknowledge a pattern and its own responsibility?

Philando Castile's death was ruled a homicide. If Jeronimo Yanez didn't kill him, maybe we did.

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By Their Strange Fruit by Katelin H is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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