Officer’s knee restraint ‘like leaving Floyd without use of his lung’

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 for ‘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

‘Dependent on right side’

was shallow breathing. Small breaths that weren’t able to carry the air through his lungs.

‘It was almost to the effect a surgeon had gone in and removed a lung. He was going to be totally dependent on the right side.’

Prosecutors hope that 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 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 then asked Lieutenant Zimmerman what he thought about Chauvin’s use of force, to which the officer replied: ‘Totally unnecessary.’

He added: ‘Putting your knee on [the] 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.