Daddy changed the world, says Floyd’s six-year-old daughter
Protesters chanted her father’s name in cities all over America and she heard it again on the television news.
‘‘Daddy changed the world,’’ George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter, Gianna, declared.
Her father died on Tuesday last week after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes as he lay handcuffed on a road outside a grocery store, during an arrest filmed by a bystander and now seen around the world.
Gianna’s mother, Roxie Washington, described struggling to tell her daughter what had happened.
‘‘She said, ‘Mama, something’s going on with my family,’ and I said, ‘‘Why do you say that?’ ‘‘ Washington told CNN as her daughter sat solemnly at her side. ‘‘She said, ‘Because I hear them saying my daddy’s name on TV.’ She wanted to know how he died and the only thing I can do is [say], ‘Hey, don’t worry’.’’
Floyd, 46, who was originally from Houston, was said to have moved to Minneapolis to be near Washington and their daughter. He worked as a security guard for a restaurant.
‘‘This is what these cops took from me,’’ Washington said. ‘‘At the end of the day they get to go home to be with their families. Gianna does not have a father. He will never see her grow up and graduate. He will never walk her down the aisle. If there is a problem she’s having, and she needs her dad, she does not have that any more.
‘‘I’m here for my baby, and I’m here for George because I want justice for him. I want justice for him because he was good. No matter what anybody thinks, he was good.’’