The 4-year-old girl tried to calm her distraught mother, Diamond Reynolds, as both of them cried in the back of a police car.
Mother and child had just seen a Minnesota police officer shoot Reynold’s boyfriend, Philando Castile multiple times during a traffic stop.
Shortly after, police placed Reynolds and her young daughter in the back of a squad car. Reynolds was in handcuffs.
As they spent the next agonizing moments struggling to grasp what they had witnessed, their emotional interaction in the police car was captured in a video that was released Wednesday.
A shaken Reynolds let out a painful scream, sobbing and cursing, in the video shown by CNN affiliate WCCO.
This frightened the little girl, who became worried that her mother would be shot too.
“Mom, please stop cussing and screaming,” she said, “I don’t want you to get shooted.”
Reynolds replied, “OK. Give me a kiss.”
The child with braids in her hair, leaned over to peck her mom on the cheek.
She also tried to reassure her mother many times, wrapping her arms around her mother and telling here: “It’s OK. I’m right here with you.”
“I can keep you safe,” she said, placing her hands on Reynold’s neck and face.
There are moments in the video that show Reynolds trying to be calm for her daughter, then becoming overwhelmed with emotions in the immediate aftermath of Castile’s shooting. Reynolds had livestreamed what had happened after her boyfriend was shot by the officer on Facebook Live.
Last week, a jury found that police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, not guilty of second-degree manslaughter. The verdict was met by protests Friday.
Reynolds and Castile dated on and off for three years, she had testified during the trial. Castile, 32, had cared for Reynolds’ daughter and helped provide for them. They were living together at the time of his death.
In the squad car at one point, Reynolds held her daughter on her lap.
“What are we going to do?” she asked tearfully.
The girl sobbed that Castile was “our favorite guy that we used to have.”
“He was the only one that was there for us,” her mom said.
In another moment of the video, the little girl sat in the corner of the car and lamented over the police shooting: “I wish this town was safer.”
