• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 7, 2016

The aftermath of a fatal police shooting in Minnesota was live streamed on Facebook on Wednesday evening, triggering a wave of online protest and adding fuel to the already incendiary controversy around police relations with black communities.

Philando Castile, a black motorist driving with his girlfriend Lavish Reynolds and her young daughter as passengers, was pulled over in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, for a broken taillight around 9 p.m. on Wednesday night. He advised the officer that there was a gun in the car for which he had a legal permit, then reached for his wallet to produce his driver’s license, at which point the officer shot him four times, apparently out of fear he was reaching for the gun.

Reynolds began live streaming the encounter on Facebook immediately after Castile was shot, showing his bloody body slumped over on her own and declaring, “They killed my boyfriend.” After narrating what just happened, Reynolds addresses the police officer: “Oh my God, please don’t tell me he’s gone. Please don’t tell me my boyfriend just went like that. Please, Jesus, don’t tell me that he’s gone. Please, officer, don’t tell me that you just did this to him. You shot four bullets into him, sir. He was just getting his license and registration, sir.”

The video goes on for 10 minutes, some of it blacked out but with audio still broadcasting as Reynolds and her daughter are ordered out of the car, Reynolds is handcuffed, and they are confined in the back of the police cruiser. Castile, a 32-year-old cafeteria worker at a Montessori school in St. Paul, was transported to a nearby hospital where he died shortly afterwards.

The Minnesota shooting comes just a day after video circulated showing another police-related fatality in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a 37-year-old black man, Alton B. Sterling, was shot and killed by a white police officer after resisting arrest. The two arresting officers had removed a gun and were pinning Sterling on the ground when he was killed.

In both cases the video circulated quickly on social media, along with hashtags of the victims’ names and protests against police brutality.