MINNEAPOLIS — The woman who was in a relationship with George Floyd for three years took the witness stand Thursday morning, recounting their first kiss, first date and final phone call to jurors in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Jurors listened to her personal, emotional testimony after sitting through hours of police body-camera videos Wednesday. The videos showed that, moments after Chauvin took his knee off of Floyd’s neck, he defended his actions to a bystander.
The bystander, Charles McMillian, 61, broke down sobbing on the witness stand as he recounted his memories of last Memorial Day. Videos shown to the jurors reveal McMillian confronted Chauvin as the ambulance carrying Floyd pulled away from the scene, sirens blaring. McMillian told Chauvin he didn’t respect what Chauvin had done.
“That’s one person’s opinion,” Chauvin said from inside his squad car to McMillian on the sidewalk, according to body-camera video. “We gotta control this guy ’cause he’s a sizable guy … and it looks like he’s probably on something.”
Floyd, a Black man, died in police custody on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pinned his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
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Latest updates:
- Seth Bravinder, a paramedic for Hennepin County EMS since June 2017, testified Thursday morning.
- Minneapolis native Courteney Ross, 45, also testified Thursday morning about her three-year relationship with Floyd.
- Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother from Houston, was in court Thursday.
- Jurors have heard from 14 witnesses to the death of George Floyd, and several have cried on the stand describing their attempts to intervene on his behalf.
- Witnesses have included, an off-duty firefighter, 911 dispatcher, a cashier working across the street, the teenager who recorded the now viral video of Floyd’s death and her 9-year-old cousin.
- The prosecution on Wednesday played videos from the body-cams of former officers Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao, as well as part of Chauvin’s video.
Paramedic who responded to George Floyd ‘didn’t see any breathing or movement’
Seth Zachary Bravinder, a paramedic for Hennepin County EMS since June 2017 who responded to the 911 call last Memorial Day, took the witness stand Thursday morning.
When paramedics arrived, Bravinder said he saw multiple officers on the side of the road on top of “our patient lying on the ground next to a squad car.” He said he “assumed there was potentially some struggle still since they were still on top of him.”
Bravinder said he parked the ambulance and walked to the back while his partner went to check on the patient. “From what I could see where I was at, I didn’t see any breathing or movement or anything like that,” Bravinder said. He said Floyd appeared unresponsive, in handcuffs.
Bravinder said he was watching his partner checking on the patient to get a cue on what to do next. Bravinder said his partner checked the carotid pulse on Floyd’s neck and his pupils. He and his partner discussed next steps. “I asked, ‘is he in cardiac arrest,'” Bravinder said. “He said, ‘I think so.'” Cardiac arrest is someone not responsive and not breathing and doesn’t have a pulse.
Prosecutor Erin Eldridge played a clip of officer Thomas Lane’s body camera video, which shows Floyd lying on his stomach, flat and unmoving as the paramedics bring a stretcher over. They cut through his black shirt to begin to attend to him.
Bravinder is seen in the video making a gesture with his hand to have Chauvin move his knee so that Floyd can be put on the gurney. Bravinder also tries to ensure Floyd’s head doesn’t slam into the ground while he’s moved because his body is limp, according to the video.
When they left the scene, Bravinder said he walked into the back of the ambulance, and the cardiac monitor was showing a flat line – no activity in the heart.
Courteney Ross, who dated Floyd, recounts meeting: ‘We had our first kiss in the lobby’
Minneapolis native Courteney Ross, 45, who had a relationship with George Floyd for about three years, took the witness stand for the prosecution Thursday morning. She gave jurors their first glimpse at Floyd’s personal life, including times good and bad.
Ross said she met Floyd in August 2017. “It’s one of my favorite stories,” she said, getting emotional and stifling tears as she recounted the romantic beginning.
The day they met, Ross had gotten off work at the coffee shop where she has worked part-time for 22 years. She went to see her son’s father who was staying at a shelter and was waiting in the lobby for him. Floyd worked there as a security guard.
“Floyd came up to me. Floyd had this great deep Southern voice, raspy. ‘You OK, Sis,’ he said. I wasn’t OK. He said, ‘Can I pray with you?’ We’d been through so much, my sons and I. And this kind person asks if he can pray with me. It was so sweet. …We had our first kiss in the lobby.”
Ross said that during early 2020, they had separated for a while. But from March to early May, they were together every day. She stifled tears again after being shown a photo of Floyd.
Ross said Floyd was “devastated” after his mother died in May 2018. “Floyd is what I would call a mama’s boy. I could tell, from the minute I met him. When he came back (from mother’s funeral in another state) he seemed like a shell of himself, like he was broken.”
Ross said Floyd saved her number in his phone as “mama.” Asked by the prosecutor Matthew Frank whether Floyd referred to his mother that way, Ross said: “He called her mama, too” but in a “different” way. Floyd repeatedly cried out, mama, during his fateful struggle with Chauvin and other Minneapolis police officers.
Ross acknowledged that drug use was part of their relationship. “Floyd and I both suffered from opiate addiction,” she said. “We both suffered from chronic pain. Mine was in my neck. His was in his back. We both had prescriptions. After prescriptions were filled, we got addicted, and we both tried, very hard, to break the addictions, many times,” she said.
On cross-examination by lead defense attorney Eric Nelson, Ross agreed that she and Floyd went through ups and down during which one or the other of them, or both of them, used pain pills.
Nelson asked Ross about a time in March when Floyd had to be hospitalized. Ross she went to pick Floyd up from his house but “his stomach really hurt” and he was “doubled over in pain.” She took Floyd to the hospital and later learned he had overdosed. She said she didn’t know at that time that Floyd had taken heroin or any drugs other than opiates.
Nelson turned his questioning to Maurice Hall, who was in the SUV with Floyd when officers first approached his car last Memorial Day. Ross said she “didn’t like Maurice very much.” She acknowledged that she told the FBI that Floyd had bought narcotics from Hall, but said she “did not see it with my own eyes.”
“Do you recall telling the FBI (that Floyd’s hospital stay for an overdose) was from heroin?” Nelson asked. “I was speculating,” Ross said.
Ross said she was in the car at a hotel while Floyd was buying pills a week before his death. She said she was on the phone with Floyd, and thought she heard Hall’s voice in the background. She said she only learned afterward that Floyd was with Hall on May 25, 2020.
On redirect examination, Frank tried to show that Floyd had not been in immediate danger of dying from the drugs he’d taken in the weeks before his death. “He had a lot of energy. He was playing football, eating, hanging out,” said Ross.
George Floyd pleads in body-cam video
During intense testimony Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors introduced body-camera footage showing George Floyd pleading for his life. Taken together with the store and street surveillance videos, the videos provide a compelling 360-degree view of the encounter, as well as what happened before and after the actual struggle with police.
First to be shown was the body-cam video from officer Thomas Lane, who can be seen on video walking over to Floyd’s SUV. Lane quickly drew his firearm and yelled at Floyd through Floyd’s closed car window to raise his hands. The video became more intense as Floyd appeared to only raise one hand to the steering wheel, seemingly angering Lane, who had been on the job only four days by the May 25 incident.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Floyd cried.
“Let me see your hands,” Lane said. “Put your f*** hands on the wheel.”
Soon, Floyd pleads, “Officer, please don’t shoot me.”
Officers then take Floyd over to sit on the sidewalk, according to the video from officer J. Alexander Keung, showing a different angle of the same moments. The incident grew more tense as the officers try to force Floyd into the squad car as Floyd pleads with the officers, saying he’s claustrophobic and has anxiety.
Body-cam video from officer Tou Thao gives a view of Floyd sliding across the back seat of the patrol car and out the other side. Then, Floyd is forced to the ground, with nearby bystanders heard warning officers Floyd is going to have a heart attack.
Lane can be seen with what looks like the equipment for a hobble restraint, which is part of the “maximal restraint technique” for a resisting person.
“He’s got to be on something,” one of the officers said, at times guessing if it was PCP because Floyd’s eyes were shifting back and forth.
As Floyd shouts that he can’t breathe, Lane says, “You’re talking fine, man. Deep breaths.”
“I’m through, I’m through,” Floyd says. “You’re doing a lot of talking … it takes an awful lot of oxygen,” an officer says.
Rodney Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, shook his head from side to side, and at one point glared briefly at Chauvin. When prosecutors played the first video, Floyd looked stoic and sad, hugging his midsection lightly and swiveling in his chair. He sat through the second, third, fourth videos of the incident, all from different angles.
According to the videos, Lane is the first person who gets off of Floyd. Chauvin continues to keep his knee on Floyd while a paramedic checks his neck for a pulse. He appears to slightly ease up pressure, but does not take his knee off until the paramedics are ready to load Floyd onto the gurney.
Watching George Floyd die had a ‘profound’ impact on witnesses
On Wednesday, Judge Peter Cahill had to call a 10-minute recess when Charles McMillian, 61, began to sob as he watched the video showing Floyd struggling with police and calling out for his mother. “I feel helpless,” McMillian said, struggling to regain his composure in court. “My mom died June 25th.”
Almost everyone who has testified in Chauvin’s trial became choked up on the witness stand Tuesday and Wednesday as they described watching Floyd go unconscious and lose his pulse. Many expressed regret that they couldn’t help Floyd.
Sometimes survivors of traumatic events hold a “false belief” about their role – for example, that they could’ve saved Floyd from dying, said Nadine Kaslow, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory School of Medicine.
Witnessing a severely traumatic event – such as Floyd’s death – in person can have “profound” psychological effects, both short and long term, she said.
“It will impact them for the rest of their lives,” Kaslow said. “When people are telling the story, it’s almost like they are reliving a lot of memories.” Read more.
Contributing: Trevor Hughes
Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/04/01/chauvin-trial-live-day-4-body-camera-video-george-floyd/7019204002/
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