Jeronimo Yanez remembered smelling "the odor of burning marijuana" as he approached the white Oldsmobile sedan he had stopped near the intersection of Larpenteur Avenue and Fry Street in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. It was a little after 9 p.m. on a Wednesday in July 2016, and Yanez, who worked for the St. Anthony Police Department, had been assigned to patrol the streets of Lauderdale, a city just west of Falcon Heights.
The whiff of weed from the Oldsmobile, Yanez later said, figured in the threat he perceived from the car's driver, a 32-year-old school cafeteria worker named Philando Castile. Yanez fatally shot Castile, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, a few seconds after learning that he had a gun in the car.
