Cop’s att’y: George popped pills before bust

George Floyd took what were “thought to be two Percocet pills” before his fatal encounter with police, the lawyer for ex-Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin said at his murder trial Monday.

Defense lawyer Eric Nelson said in opening arguments that Floyd’s pals told police that they had trouble waking him up after he took the painkillers on May 25, 2020, the day he died while in police custody.

“Mr. Floyd’s friends will explain that Mr. Floyd fell asleep in the car and that they couldn’t wake him up to get going,” Nelson told the jury. “They thought police might be coming.”

“They kept trying to wake him up,” he said. “In fact, one of these friends, Shawanda Hill, called her daughter, Shakira Prince, to come and pick her up because they couldn’t keep Mr. Floyd awake.”

“While they were in the car, Mr. Floyd consumed what they thought to be two Percocet pills,” Nelson said, referring to Hill and another friend, Maurice Hall.

An autopsy found fentanyl and methamphetamine — a narcotic concoction known as a “speedball” — in Floyd’s system. Nelson said the pills “were manufactured to have the appearance of Percocet.”

“The evidence will show that when confronted by police, Mr. Floyd put drugs in his mouth in an effort to conceal them from police,” he said.

In his own opening statement, state prosecutor Jerry Blackwell conceded that Floyd suffered from drug addiction but argued that he died as a result of Chauvin pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck.

“Here in this case, you’ll hear that an autopsy didn’t see any objective things in George Floyd’s tissues,” Blackwell said.

“But you have to look at all the evidence to see what happened at the scene . . . all telltale signs of a person struggling and suffering from not receiving sufficient oxygen.”