At J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School in St. Paul, Minn., Philando Castile was the nutrition services supervisor before he was killed by a cop in July 2016.
The parents of the children who adored Philando (Mr. Phil) Castile are now grappling with the difficult task of explaining to their kids why his killer walks free. After a year of mourning their friend, students at J.J. Hill felt their pain become renewed with the recent news that Jeronimo Yanez, a St. Anthony police officer, was acquitted of second-degree manslaughter.
Castile, 32, not only left behind his girlfriend, her daughter, his mother, family and friends, his death affects the lives of the 395 students who would talk to and high-five him each morning while waiting in line for breakfast at their school’s cafeteria where he worked.
“They’re (the students) right at the age where they believe there will be social justice,” Sakki Selznick, parent of a J.J. Hill 10-year-old student, told HuffPost. “That’s a lie.”
Selznick, who’s white, told the news site that her daughter so craved one of Mr. Phil’s high-fives that one night, while thinking about it at home, she started high-fiving the air, hoping Castile would somehow respond. Selznick then had to explain the verdict to her child and that she would not see him again — sentiments that propelled her 16-year-old son to nearly put his fist through a wall.
Another parent, Zuki Ellis, said that her fourth grader isn’t likely to get over Castile’s death any time soon, either. J.J. Hill is a diverse school— nearly half of the student body is Asian, Hispanic or black, with Somalian and Hmong immigrants among them — and Ellis, who’s black, never considered Castile’s fate a possibility in her community. She and other parents described him as an “exceedingly gentle and unfailingly kind man who did everything right.”
“He (her son) has the same question a lot of us have: How does something so awful happen and no one is accountable for that?” Ellis said. “How do you kill Mr. Phil and nothing happens?”
Castile was shot and killed by Yanez during a routine traffic stop after revealing he was in lawful possession of a gun while in the process of complying with the officer’s demand to show his identification.
Another parent, local business owner Tony Fragnito, said that just a few months after Castile’s death, the presidential election happened and his younger son packed a suitcase and said he was moving to Canada with his immigrant friends because “it’s not safe for them anymore.”
One of J.J. Hill’s teachers, John Horton, has two children enrolled at the school. He said that when discussing civil rights in class, his students brought up Mr. Phil’s death, looking to the adults in their lives for answers.
“I think a lot of the adults are still trying to work through it, and the kids see this,” Horton told HuffPost. “They see the instability and the not understanding from the adult side.”
In the aftermath of Castile’s death and Yanez’s acquittal, the school is providing special grief counselors for students and staff. A bench has been labeled in his honor and a tree planted in his name. And yet, the students and parents who knew and loved Mr. Phil have not been able to move on.
“It has been a hard year,” Ellis said. “I don’t imagine the next year will be easier.”
