“When I arrived, he was dead, and when I dropped him off at the hospital, he was still in cardiac arrest”, said, Thursday 1er April, Derek Smith on day four of the murder trial of white policeman Derek Chauvin. The first paramedic to arrive to rescue African-American George Floyd told Minneapolis court on Thursday that he found him dead, along with several police officers ” on him “.
On May 25, 2020, in this large city of Minnesota, in the north of the United States, four agents question the black forty-something suspected of having passed a fake ticket in a grocery store. They pin him to the ground to restrain him, handcuff him and lean on him for more than nine minutes. Derek Chauvin, the most experienced of them, 45, nineteen of them with the Minneapolis Police Department, keeps his knee on George Floyd’s neck even after he’s passed out, until he arrives. from an ambulance.
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Flat heartbeat
A fact confirmed by the rescuer, who immediately looked for his pulse at the level of the carotid artery. “I couldn’t find any, I thought the patient was dead. “ Once in the ambulance, a machine confirmed a heartbeat ” dish “, added his colleague Zachary Bravinder. “The heart was not pumping blood, it is not a good sign …” The two men tried to revive him. In vain.
Derek Chauvin, who faces forty years in prison, pleads not guilty in this case which has sparked waves of demonstrations against racism and police violence from New York to Seattle, but also in Tokyo, Paris or Sydney. For his lawyer, Eric Nelson, he did not cause the death of George Floyd, who allegedly died of an overdose. The official autopsy did find traces of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, in his body but identified “Neck compression” as the cause of death. Medical experts are summoned to discuss it.
The overdose thesis
The policeman’s lawyer sought, from Thursday 1er April, to support her thesis at the hearing of Courteney Ross, a 45-year-old white woman who had an intimate relationship with George Floyd from 2017 until her death. Very moved, this mother of two depicted a man ” full of energy “, “Soft” with whom life was ” an adventure “, before modestly discussing their drug use. “It’s a classic story of people who become addicted to opiates because of chronic pain. Me it was on the neck, him on the back … “, she simply explained.
Me Eric Nelson bombarded her with questions about the nature of the drugs used, the effects of certain pills and about George Floyd’s stay in hospital in early March 2020 for an overdose. He pointed out that the couple sometimes bought drugs from the two people who were with George Floyd at the time of his death. One of them, Morries Hall, filed an appeal to avoid testifying at trial.
A police witness for the prosecution
M’s strategye Nelson angered the Floyd family, who denounced “An easy tactic when the facts are against you”. Their lawyers replied in a statement that “Tens of thousands of Americans struggle with self-medication and opioid addiction and are treated with dignity, respect and support, not brutality”. They are confident in the ability of jurors to ” override “. The defense lawyer was just as pugnacious in the face of the last witness called on Thursday 1er April: David Ploeger, the recently retired police officer who on May 25 launched the internal investigation into the death of George Floyd. Me Nelson lifted several “Objections” to prevent him from responding, especially when the prosecution asked him if he thought the officers should have released their pressure sooner. The judge allowed him to answer. His response was clear: “When Mr. Floyd no longer offered any resistance, the officers could have stopped supporting him. “
Derek Chauvin’s trial is scheduled to last until the end of April and the verdict will be delivered immediately. His three former colleagues will be tried in August for “Complicity in murder”.
