A still from the Facebook live video showing the police shooting. Photo: Supplied

• WARNING: DISTRESSING VIDEO CONTENT BELOW   

A man was shot by a policeman during a routine traffic stop in Minnesota in a graphic event that had been caught on a Facebook Live video stream.

The man, identified in local media as Philando Castile, later died, according to his cousin in a report published by the Star-Tribune. 

Castile's girlfriend, who was in the car, said the "police shot him for no apparent reason, no reason at all."

The death comes less than a day after an unarmed black man, Alton Sterling, was killed in Baton Rouge, setting off fresh protests about the violence used in the policing of African-American communities. 

The girlfriend started the live-stream video with the man in the driver's seat slumped next to her, his white T-shirt soaked with blood on the left side. In the video, taken with her phone, she says they were pulled over for a broken taillight.

The video was posted on a Facebook page belonging to Lavish Reynolds, but it's not clear if it is the girlfriend's page or whether she sent the video to someone else to post.

The girlfriend says the officer "asked him for license and registration. He told him that it was in his wallet, but he had a pistol on him because he's licensed to carry. The officer said don't move. As he was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him in the arm four or five times."

The video shows a uniformed police officer holding a pistol on the couple from outside the car. The officer can be heard to say, "I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out."

The girlfriend says in the video that her boyfriend was shot by a Roseville police officer.

More to come

MCT, Fairfax Media