Jury is told of Floyd’s opioid woes
She testifies at Derek Chauvin’s murder trial about meeting victim, sharing his struggles.
Girlfriend describes George Floyd’s addiction struggles as prosecutors seek to explain his tolerance to drugs.
MINNEAPOLIS — George Floyd’s girlfriend tearfully told a jury Thursday the story of how they met — at a Salvation Army shelter where he was a security guard with “this great, deep Southern voice, raspy” — and how they both struggled with opioid addictions.
“Our story — it’s a classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids. We both suffered from chronic pain. Mine was in my neck and his was in his back,” Courteney Ross, 45, said on the fourth day of former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.
She said they “tried really hard to break that addiction many times.”
Prosecutors put Ross on the stand as part of an effort to humanize Floyd to the jury and portray him as more than a crime statistic, and also to explain his drug use.
The defense has argued that Chauvin did what he was trained to do and that Floyd’s death last May was caused by drugs, his underlying health conditions and his own adrenaline. An autopsy found fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system.
In other testimony, David Pleoger, a now-retired Minneapolis police sergeant who was on duty the night Floyd died, said that based on his review of the body camera video, officers should have ended their restraint once Floyd stopped resisting.
He also said officers are trained to roll people on their side to help with their breathing after they have been restrained in the prone position.
“When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers, they could have ended the restraint,” Pleoger said.
Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter, accused of killing Floyd by kneeling on the 46year-old Black man’s neck for nine minutes, 29 seconds, as Floyd lay face-down in handcuffs, accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a neighborhood market.
The case triggered large protests and scattered violence around the U.S., and widespread soul-searching over racism and police brutality.
The most serious charge against the now-fired white officer carries up to 40 years in prison.
Earlier, Ross said she and Floyd met in 2017 and struggled with addiction throughout their relationship — testimony that could help prosecutors blunt the argument that drugs killed Floyd. Medical experts have said that although the level of fentanyl in his system could be fatal to some, people who use it regularly can develop a tolerance to it.
Ross said they both had prescriptions, and when those ran out, they used others’ prescriptions or illegal drugs.
In March 2020, Ross drove Floyd to the emergency room because he was having extreme stomach pain, and she later learned he had overdosed. In the months that followed, Ross said, she and Floyd spent a lot of time together during the coronavirus shutdown, and Floyd was clean.
But she suspected he had begun using again about two weeks before his death because his behavior changed: She said at times he would be up and bouncing around, and at other times he was unintelligible.
Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson drove hard at Floyd’s drug use in cross-examining Ross, asking questions aimed at showing the danger of overdose and death.
Under questioning from Nelson, Ross also disclosed that Floyd’s pet name for her in his phone was “Mama” — testimony that called into question accounts that Floyd was crying out for his mother as he lay pinned to the pavement.
Also Thursday, a paramedic who arrived on the scene that day testified that the first call was a Code 2 for someone with a mouth injury, but it was quickly upgraded to Code 3 — a lifethreatening incident that led them to turn on the lights and siren.
Seth Bravinder said he saw no signs that Floyd was breathing or moving, and it appeared he was in cardiac arrest. A second paramedic, Derek Smith, testified that he checked for a pulse and couldn’t detect one: “In layman’s terms? I thought he was dead.”
Bravinder said they loaded Floyd into the ambulance so he could get care “in an optimum environment” but also because bystanders “appeared very upset on the sidewalk,” and there was some yelling. “In my mind at least, we wanted to get away from that,” he said.
Chauvin’s lawyer has argued that the police on the scene were distracted by what they perceived as a growing and increasingly hostile crowd. Video showed about 15 onlookers nearby.