Facebook denied a provocative report on Friday claiming that police deleted a video of the shooting of Philando Castile, the black man killed by a white officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota.
Reached by The Huffington Post, a spokeswoman for Facebook maintained that a technical glitch caused the temporary removal of the video, which shows footage of the 32-year-old slumped over in his seat, covered in blood, after the officer shot him four times as he reached for his ID.
Earlier on Friday, The Register, a tech news website based in London, published a report claiming police had deleted the video after handcuffing Castile’s fiancée, Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds, who filmed the incident from the passenger seat of their car.
“Multiple sources with knowledge of the event have tonight confirmed to The Register that someone – highly suspected to be the city’s police – used her phone to remove her recording from public view shortly after the shooting,” the website wrote.
It’s unclear who those sources are and how the video would have been returned to Facebook if police deleted it. Recording live video via the Facebook app does not automatically create a locally saved video file on your phone, and deleting a live video from your profile generates a warning that the move is permanent.
