The day St. Anthony Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, sparked protests nationwide and renewed debate over the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
But July 6 wasn’t the first time the officer and the school cafeteria supervisor crossed paths.
Newly released documents show that Yanez had a law enforcement encounter with Castile in 2011.
It was November 23, and another officer had pulled over Castile in his car for a defective brake light, according to a police report.
A check of Castile’s record revealed a misdemeanor warrant for driving after his license had been revoked, the report says.
The officer arrested Castile and brought him to Hennepin County jail, where Yanez booked him.
The encounter takes up less than a line in a police report, and there’s no way of telling if the two recognized each other on that fatal day. But it speaks to the number of encounters Castile had with law enforcement over the years. He was pulled over at least 52 times since 2002, something protesters argue is a sign of racial profiling.
An attorney for Yanez previously told CNN the shooting had nothing to do with race and everything to do with a gun being present at the scene.