Millions of people around the world watched the video of George Floyd dying while a White Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on his neck. Two autopsies have concluded that Floyd’s death was a homicide.
Chauvin eventually was charged with murder and three other police officers — Thomas Lane, Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao — were charged as accomplices.
However, one of the White cops involved in the alleged crime will argue that Floyd died from drug use and a heart condition, not be a knee on his neck until he could no longer breathe.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Lane’s attorney revealed that he will argue that Floyd died from an overdose of the powerful opioid fentanyl.
While to many it would appear to be an open-and-shut case in the prosecutor’s favor, the defense will attempt to gain sympathy for the officers while painting Floyd as a drug user who died of an overdose.
But bodycam footage revealed that officers were aggressive with Floyd when then incident began.
Floyd stared down the barrel of a police officer’s gun moments before he was killed. Bodycam footage showed an officer pointing his service weapon at Floyd, who was questioned by Lane on May 25, 2020, after a store clerk called 911 about an alleged counterfeit $20 bill.
Chauvin restrained Floyd and knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes, according to the newly released footage.
The bodycam footage also revealed that the EMT medics did not rush to assist Floyd after taking his pulse, and it took them three minutes to perform CPR. At that point, Floyd had been unresponsive for seven minutes. He eventually was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
