Chauvin-trial witnesses detail ongoing angst
MINNEAPOLIS — On May 25, the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue was alive in its usual way, attracting a cross-section of Twin Cities residents handling life’s most mundane rituals: filling up a gas tank, taking a stroll, buying dinner.
But in an instant, the lives that converged there that evening were forever changed. That’s the corner where George Floyd died during an arrest captured on video that was eventually viewed around the world.
A week into the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in Floyd’s death, a clearer picture has emerged of what transpired at that intersection beyond the widely circulated video of Floyd crying out that he could not breathe.
As the nation watched the televised trial proceedings last week, witness after witness described a sense of lingering pain and how that corner in Minneapolis has become a haunting presence foe them.
The testimony was often-tearful, with eyewitnesses describing how they have been left with memories of the graphic end to Floyd’s life and guilt that they could not do anything to save him.
Ten bystanders, ranging in age from 9 to 61, took the witness stand in the Hennepin County courthouse last week. Some said they cannot ever go back to the place of Floyd’s arrest and death. Others said they cannot stop second-guessing what transpired and what they should have done.
Among them was Alyssa Funari, who said she needed a cord to connect her cellphone to the car to play music that day, so she stopped at the corner store.
After a long day of fishing with his son and friends, Donald Williams II headed to the same store, Cup Foods, to buy a drink and clear his head.
And 9-year-old Judeah Reynolds walked there with her older cousin to buy snacks.
“It was difficult because I felt like there wasn’t really anything I could do as a bystander,” Funari, 18, said of Floyd’s arrest.
She testified Tuesday and can be seen in police body camera footage standing just off the curb in a white tank top, filming Floyd’s arrest. Referring to the police, she added, “the highest power was there, and I felt like I was failing.”
The intersection is near one of Minneapolis’ historic Black neighborhoods. It is usually busy, with one of the few gas stations in the neighborhood and a couple of restaurants. And Cup Foods is a place people go for a little bit of everything.
In the months since Floyd’s death, the intersection has been closed to traffic, and a sprawling memorial has sprung up. The Speedway gas station is closed, and activists have altered its sign to “Peoples Way.”
They hold regular meetings around a bonfire in between the pumps. There is talk of community and healing. But there also has been a spike in crime, and city officials are at something of a standoff with activists over reopening the intersection.
Cup Foods is largely back to its normal rhythms, with regulars popping in and joking with staff members, who hold court from behind a high counter.
Christopher Martin, 19, was the clerk who first flagged an apparently fake $20 bill that Floyd had used to pay for cigarettes, setting in motion the events that led to the confrontation with police.
Testifying Wednesday, Martin’s voice was steady but strained, as he explained that he was overcome with disbelief and guilt in May as he watched Chauvin and two other officers subduing Floyd.
“If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided,” he said in court.
Adam Abumayyaleh, who owns Cup Foods with his brothers, said in an interview that Martin went to him in tears after Floyd died and said it was his fault.
“I told him, ‘Stop it, that’s nonsense,’” said Abumayyaleh, who was not called to testify in the trial.
Abumayyaleh also sometimes wonders “what if?” He was the manager on duty the night Floyd died and had instructed a clerk to call the police after Floyd twice refused to return to the store to make good on using the fake bill.
Abumayyaleh said he had been back at work for just three days in May, after a severe bout of covid-19. He was in the middle of a three-hour job unlocking cellphones and was distracted.
Had he not been busy, he said, he probably would have been the one to go out and confront Floyd and his friends about the fake bill, and the outcome might have been different.
“If I can go back, of course I would not call the police,” he said. “Objectively, I know we didn’t do anything wrong. We are not responsible for the police being bad people.”