St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez shot Castile, 32, seven times in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St Paul, on July 6 while his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter were sat in the car.

His girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, who was in the passenger street, live streamed the gruesome aftermath of the fatal shooting live on Facebook, and sparked widespread protests when it was posted online.

She insists that her boyfriend was reaching for his ID when he was shot dead. Castile had just told Yanez that he had a gun permit and was armed.

Yanez's attorney, Tom Kelly, argued his client had been reacting to the presence of a gun, and insisted one reason Yanez pulled Castile over was because he thought he looked like an armed robbery suspect.

But Ramsey County Attorney John Choi found that force was not justified, adding that 'unreasonable fear cannot justify the use of deadly force'. He also revealed that Castile's last words were: 'I wasn't reaching for it'.