First responders’ testimony offers somber picture of a lifeless George Floyd when medics arrived

Paramedics’ testimony on Thursday during the trial of Derek Chauvin painted a somber picture of an unresponsive George Floyd shortly after they arrived at the scene, where the former police officer was recorded kneeling on Floyd’s neck last May.

Their testimony provided jurors with a detailed and disturbing medical account of the events that transpired after Floyd’s arrest as medics worked to resuscitate him.

These recollections marked a shift in the trial that had thus far been dominated largely by emotional eyewitness testimony and gripping bystander video footage for the past three days.

Day four of the trial also featured testimony from David Pleoger, a former Minneapolis Police Department sergeant who had been Chauvin’s supervisor at the time of Floyd’s arrest. 

 

First responders arrive on the scene

Prosecutor Erin Eldridge asked Derek Smith, a paramedic with the Hennepin County EMS, what Floyd’s overall condition was after checking for his pulse and pupils at the scene. 

“In lay terms, I thought he was dead,” Smith testified on Thursday

Smith said that Floyd did not have a pulse, and testified that his pupils were “large” and “dilated.” He added that when he arrived on the scene and walked up to Floyd, he “noticed he wasn’t moving,” and “didn’t see any chest rise or fall on this individual.”

The testimony came shortly after Seth Zachary Bravinder, another paramedic employed by the same medical service who had also responded to the scene, testified Thursday that he “didn’t see breathing or movement” from Floyd from a distance upon his arrival.

He said one of his paramedic colleagues determined Floyd had been in cardiac arrest at the time. Pressed by the prosecution whether that meant Floyd’s heart had stopped, Bravinder answered “yes.”

Footage was also played during the trial showing Floyd being placed on a stretcher.

In the video, Bravinder could be seen holding Floyd’s head. Bravinder testified after the clip was shown that he had done so in an attempt to “keep it from slamming down on the pavement as we moved him over.”

Bravinder recalled Floyd appearing “limp” and said he flatlined in an ambulance just blocks from the scene. He also testified that at one point, Floyd had been administered adrenaline, a practice generally used in cases when a patient’s heart has stopped, as paramedics worked to revive him.

However, Bravinder said Floyd’s pulse hadn’t been detected at any point.

Minneapolis Fire Department Capt. Jeremy Norton, another first responder who later helped handle ventilation for Floyd, testified about the moment he saw Floyd on a stretcher after entering the ambulance that day.

Norton described Floyd’s condition at the time as “an unresponsive body on a cot.” He said an airway was placed in his throat so responders could use an oxygen-delivering device to “breathe for him.”

Medics also had been using a compression device for his “heart to get blood going through his body,” he testified.

Norton said he ended up reporting the incident and what he observed that day to the fire department because he “was aware that a man had been killed in police custody.”

 

Use of force

During his time on the stand Thursday, David Pleoger, a former Minneapolis Police Department sergeant and former supervisor of Derek Chauvin, testified about Chauvin’s use of force during Floyd’s arrest. 

Pleoger said Chauvin’s use of force on Floyd could have ended when Floyd was handcuffed and on the ground, since he was “no longer offering up any restraint.”

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked Pleoger’s opinion on when restraint used on Floyd should have ended. Pleoger said they could have done so “when Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers.”

Schleicher followed up his question, asking Pleoger if that time to release restraint was after Floyd was handcuffed and on the ground.

Pleoger responded “correct.”

The former sergeant added that he reviewed the body camera footage associated with the case.

During the former supervisor’s time on the stand, the court played body camera footage that captured a phone call between Chauvin and Pleoger shortly after Floyd’s arrest.

In the video, Chauvin can be heard telling Pleoger, “I was just going to call and have you come out to our scene here. … We just had to hold a guy down. He was going crazy. He wouldn’t … he wouldn’t go in the back of the squad-,” before the footage cuts out.

Pleoger testified that after the video cut out, he believed Chauvin told him that they had tried to put Floyd in the car but he had become combative, and that he eventually suffered a “medical emergency” after struggling.

Pleoger added that he didn’t believe Chauvin mentioned that he applied specific force or restraint, including using his knee on Floyd’s neck.

 

Floyd’s former girlfriend testifies

Day four of the trial also featured testimony from Courteney Ross, George Floyd’s former girlfriend, who offered a tearful account of their on-and-off relationship over the years, his love for his children, as well the couple’s battle with an addiction to opioids. 

Ross said she and Floyd met and began dating around August 2017. At the time, Floyd had been a security guard at the Salvation Army in Minneapolis. She said Floyd approached her after finding her crying in the lobby of the building and offered to pray with her.

“He said, ‘Well, can I pray with you?’” Ross said, choking up. “I was so tired and we had been through so much, my sons and I, and this kind person just to come up to me and say, ‘Can I pray for you,’ when I felt alone in this lobby. It was so sweet.”

“That was just Floyd,” she added.

Ross said that she and Floyd shared a similar story about their opioid use. She said their’s was a “classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids.” 

“We both suffered from chronic pain, mine’s was in my neck,” she said before adding that Floyd, a former college athlete, suffered from back pain. Ross said she and Floyd were aware of the other’s addiction and would try to help each other.

During cross examination, the defense focused on the couple’s opioid addiction and Floyd’s use of controlled substances. Defense attorney Eric Nelson was particularly focused on how the couple purchased controlled substances. 

Nelson zeroed in on Morries Hall, a friend of Floyd who had been with him the day he was killed. Nelson asked Ross whether the couple had purchased controlled substances from him in the past. She answered that they had.

He then asked whether questionable pills she received in March 2020 had come from Hall. Ross said no.

Floyd was also hospitalized for several days after an overdose in March 2020. 

Hall said this week he would not testify in the trial, invoking Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and his relationship to Floyd.

 

Cause of death

The cause of Floyd’s death has been a key focus of the trial. 

Floyd’s death was ruled a homicide by the Hennepin County medical examiner in Minnesota days after he died. The report released by the county then said he experienced cardiopulmonary arrest while under law enforcement’s  restraint.

Floyd allegedly struggled with an opioid addiction, and trace amounts of fentanyl and methamphetamine were discovered in his body following his death.

However, neither were found to have caused his death on May 25. 

“You will learn that he did not die from a drug overdose. He did not die from an opioid overdose,” lead prosecutor Jerry Blackwell said during the trial earlier this week.

However, Nelson argued that drugs played a role in Floyd’s death.

Nelson argued Floyd died from a cardiac arrhythmia “that occurred as a result of hypertension, coronary disease, ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and the adrenaline throwing — flowing through his body, all of which acted to further compromise an already compromised heart.”

In a statement on Thursday, Floyd family attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci knocked Chauvin’s defense, claiming his legal team was attempting to “construct the narrative that George Floyd’s cause of death was the fentanyl in his system.” 

“We want to remind the world who witnessed his death on video that George was walking, talking, laughing, and breathing just fine before Derek Chauvin held his knee to George’s neck, blocking his ability to breathe and extinguishing his life for all to see,” the attorneys said.

The attorneys said they expected the defense “to put George’s character and struggles with addiction on trial because that is the go-to tactic when the facts are not on your side.” 

“We are confident that the jury will see past that to arrive at the truth — that George Floyd would have lived to see another day if Derek Chauvin hadn’t brutally ended his life in front of a crowd of witnesses pleading for his life,” they added.