Knee hold ‘like leaving Floyd without a lung’
Officer cut suspect’s air supply, murder trial is told
GEORGE Floyd’s breathing was cut off so badly when a policeman knelt on his neck it was as if ‘a surgeon had removed a lung’, the officer’s murder trial heard yesterday.
Breathing expert Dr Martin Tobin said the force used by Derek Chauvin left ‘very little opportunity’ for Mr Floyd to get oxygen into his lungs.
After watching footage of the arrest ‘hundreds of times’, Dr Tobin concluded that Chauvin’s knee was on the suspect’s neck ‘more than 90 per cent’ of the time.
He told Hennepin County Courthouse that the combined pressure of handcuffs and the officer’s knee restraint effectively meant 46-year-old Mr Floyd could not use his left lung.
He said footage of the arrest showed Mr Floyd was ‘ ramming his face into the street’ and trying to ‘crank up his chest’ in a desperate attempt to breathe.
‘Mr Floyd died from a low level of oxygen,’ Dr Tobin told the court in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
‘The cause of low level of oxygen was shallow breathing. Small breaths that weren’t able to carry the air through his lungs.
‘It was almost to the effect that a surgeon had gone in and removed a lung.
‘ He was going to be totally dependent on what he would be able to do with the right side.’
Prosecutors hope Dr Tobin’s testimony will help to prove Chauvin, 45, murdered Mr Floyd by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes on May 25 last year.
Earlier, the trial heard evidence that Chauvin’s defence team had discovered two half-chewed pills in the police patrol car Mr Floyd was pulled out of during his arrest for allegedly trying to use a counterfeit $20 note in a shop. The white pills, a mix of methamphetamine and the opioid painkiller fentanyl, had traces of Mr Floyd’s DNA and saliva, the court heard.
The defence team suggested this was evidence that he may have died from a drugs overdose rather than Chauvin’s knee restraint.
The pills were found in December, eight months after Mr Floyd’s death. Jurors were told the car had been in secure storage.
Earlier this week, the court heard police officers were not taught to kneel on a suspect’s neck to subdue them.
Lieutenant Richard Zimmerman said that if a suspect was handcuffed in the prone position like
Mr Floyd, then putting a knee on their neck ‘can kill him’.
Prosecutor Matthew Frank asked Lieutenant Zimmerman what he thought about Chauvin’s use of force, to which the officer replied: ‘Totally unnecessary.’
He added: ‘First of all, holding him down to the ground face down and putting your knee on your neck for that amount of time is just uncalled for.’
Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and manslaughter.
Three other former Minneapolis police officers are due to stand trial in August for aiding and abetting Chauvin, which they deny.
The trial continues.