May 25th, 2020 will now always be known as the day George Floyd died while being arrested by Minneapolis police. Officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes and cut off blood supply to his brain despite Floyd telling officers he couldn’t breath. Chauvin never removed his knee until over 2 minutes after Floyd had already stopped breathing altogether.
Though it’s clear from the video what happened, Hennepin County Attorney, Mike Freeman, issued a statement claiming that the Medical Examiner’s office found “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” In addition, he stated that Floyd may have had “potential” intoxicants in his system.
Floyd’s family quickly opted to call in famed pathologist Michael Baden to conduct an independent autopsy of the body, and his findings differ a bit from those released by the Medical Examiner’s office. Working alongside Dr. Allecia Wilson, Baden discovered quite clearly that Floyd’s death was a homicide caused directly by asphyxia due to compression of the neck and back.
Baden stated:
Compressive pressure of the neck and back are not seen at autopsy because the pressure has been released. It can only be seen, serious compressive pressure on the neck and back, can only be seen while the pressure is being applied or when, as in this instance, it is captured on video.
Following the results from Baden, Floyd family attorney, Ben Crump, had the following to say at a news conference:
The knee to the neck and the knees to his back both contributed to him not being able to get breath. And what those officers did, that we see on the video, is the cause of his death, not some underlying, unknown health condition. George Floyd was a healthy young man. We see in the video he was walking, breathing; he was alive. His cause of death medically was mechanical asphyxiation. The legal determination is homicide. That is it in a nutshell. The officers killed him based on a knee to his neck for almost nine minutes and two knees to his back compressing his lungs. The ambulance was his hearse.
Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder, but Floyd’s family feel that’s simply not enough. It appears most other people around the nation agree as well, as protests and riots have broken out in nearly every major city across the country over the past week since Floyd’s death.
As protesters continue actively pushing back with no signs of slowing down, President Trump has threatened significant military action to disperse crowds and attempt to put an end to the nightly riots. How far protesters are willing to take it is yet to be seen, but there’s no denying that Floyd’s death has sparked a truly overwhelming and empowering push to end police brutality.
George Floyd‘s funeral will take place in his hometown of Houston, Texas on June 9th.
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