Man fatally shot by police in Minnesota; video investigated

A man was fatally shot by police in Minnesota on Wednesday night while inside a car with a woman and a child, an official said, adding that authorities are looking into reports that the aftermath of the incident was livestreamed on Facebook.

St. Anthony Police interim police chief Jon Mangseth told reporters at a news conference that the incident began when an officer from his agency initiated a traffic stop around 9 p.m. Wednesday in Falcon Heights, a St. Paul suburb. At some point, one or more officers fired, he said. The woman and child weren't hurt, he said.

"I do not have a lot of information right now as to what the reason for the traffic stop was or what the circumstances were," Mangseth said.

The St. Anthony Police Department issued a statement early Thursday morning saying the man had died. It did not elaborate on what led to the shooting.

The man was not immediately identified.

A video posted Wednesday night on Facebook Live appeared to show an incident like the one police described. The video showed a woman sitting in a car with a man whose shirt appeared to be soaked in blood and who was quietly slumped in a seat. The woman says an officer shot her boyfriend.

A person who appeared to be an armed police officer stood at the car's window.

The Associated Press couldn't immediately verify the authenticity of the video. Mangseth said he had been "made aware there was a livestream on Facebook" but said he had not yet seen the video and didn't know anything about its contents. The department's statement did not address it.

In the video, the woman says the officer asked her boyfriend for his license and registration. She says man told the officer it was in his wallet but that he also had a pistol he was licensed to carry.

"The officer said, 'Don't move,'" the woman in the video says. "As he was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him in the arm four or five times."

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been called to investigate, Mangseth said. A spokesman for that agency couldn't immediately be reached.

No officers were injured during the incident, according to Mangseth.

By early Thursday morning, scores of people had gathered at the scene of the shooting, and some were shouting angrily, the Star Tribune reported. KARE-TV reported another crowd had gathered at the hospital where the man was taken.

The incidents comes as police use of force, particularly against minorities, is back in the national spotlight after the video-recorded fatal shooting earlier this week of 37-year-old Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge police. The U.S. Justice Department launched a civil rights investigation Wednesday into the shooting, which took place after Sterling, who was black, scuffled with two white police officers on the pavement outside a convenience store.

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