A St. Anthony police officer pulled over Philando Castile because he was driving with a broken tail or brake light and he believed that Castile looked like a suspect from an armed robbery nearby that was reported a few days earlier, the officer's attorney told the Star Tribune on Sunday.
"All he had to have was reasonable suspicion to pull him over," attorney Thomas Kelly said of his client, Jeronimo Yanez.
Kelly said his client shot Castile the night of July 6 in Falcon Heights "after he reacted to the actions of Mr. Castile."
"This has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with the presence of a gun," Kelly said. "Deadly force would not have been used if not for the presence of a gun."
Castile's cousin, Nasiy Mitsvah, accused Kelly of trying to cover up for his client.
"Even if they say he looked like someone in a robbery, it still doesn't give him a right to kill someone," he said. "They're just trying to make a person look really bad."
Albert Goins, an attorney who assisted the family in the hours following the shooting, said that if Castile was indeed a robbery suspect, officers would have initiated a felony traffic stop.
"A felony stop does not usually involve officers walking up to your car and asking you to produce your driver's license," Goins said. "A felony stop involves bringing the suspect out at gunpoint while officers are in a position of cover and having them lie on the ground until they can identify who that individual is."