Doctor says George Floyd cardiac arrest likely due to lack of oxygen

The emergency room doctor who pronounced George Floyd dead after trying to resuscitate him testified that he theorised at the time that Mr Floyd’s heart most likely stopped due to insufficient oxygen.

Dr Bradford Langenfeld, who was a senior resident on duty that night at Hennepin County Medical Centre, took the stand at the beginning of the second week of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial, as prosecutors sought to establish it was Chauvin’s knee on the black man’s neck that killed him.

Dr Langenfeld said Mr Floyd’s heart had stopped by the time he arrived at the hospital.

The doctor said that he was not told of any efforts at the scene by bystanders or police to resuscitate Mr Floyd but paramedics told him they had tried for about 30 minutes.

Dr Langenfeld told prosecutor Jerry Blackwell, based on the information he had, it was “more likely than the other possibilities” that Mr Floyd’s cardiac arrest was caused by asphyxia, or insufficient oxygen.

Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter in Mr Floyd’s death last May 25.

The white officer is accused of pinning his knee on the 46-year-old man’s neck for nine minutes, 29 seconds, as Mr Floyd lay face-down in handcuffs outside a corner market, where he had been accused of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 note.

The defence says Chauvin did what he was trained to do and Mr Floyd’s use of illegal drugs and his underlying health conditions caused his death.

An image from a police bodycam video of officers trying to remove Mr Floyd from a vehicle on May 25.