FLOYD’S DEMONS Opioid relapse shortly before death: girlfriend
George Floyd’s girlfriend said Thursday they both struggled with opioid addiction for years — and that he relapsed shortly before his death in police custody.
Courteney Batya Ross, 45, testified for the prosecution at the murder trial of ex-Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin, admitting that Floyd was a changed man after his mother’s death in 2018.
“Floyd’s what I would call a mama’s boy,” she said during emotional testimony.
“When he came back home he seemed kind of like a shell of himself,” said Ross, the day’s first witness. “He was broken.”
She said his mother’s death fueled one of several relapses into drug use that marred much of their threeyear relationship.
“Floyd and I both suffered with an opioid addiction,” Ross testified. “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. We both had prescriptions.”
She said the couple would buy prescription oxycodone and other medications “on the streets” and the black market.
“After the prescriptions were filled, we got addicted, and tried really hard to break that addiction many times,” she said. “Eventually in our relationship we shared that.”
Also on Thursday, a retired Minneapolis police sergeant said cops should have let Floyd get up when he stopped resisting.
Former Police Sgt. David Pleoger, the supervising officer on duty during Floyd’s fatal arrest, testified that Chauvin kept Floyd pinned down longer than allowed under department police or training.
“When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers, they could have ended their restraint,” the former sergeant said.
Pleoger said he responded to the scene at East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue on the day of Floyd’s death after a 911 dispatcher called to say she was “concerned” over live traffic-camera footage of the incident.
Paramedics also testified about how they worked feverishly to revive Floyd, 46, inside an ambulance — but he never regained consciousness.
Derek Smith and Seth Bravinder testified that police still had Floyd pinned down when they arrived at the scene on May 25, 2020.
“When I arrived on scene there were no medical services being provided to the patient,” Smith testified in Hennepin County District Court. “I suspected this patient could be dead.
“In a living person there should be a pulse there,” he said. “I suspected this person to be dead, in lay terms.”
Bodycam footage from the scene shows the paramedics loading a limp Floyd into the ambulance with Chauvin’s help, where they began attempts to resuscitate him.
But they said Floyd never regained a pulse, even after firefighters arrived and helped to try to revive him.
Chauvin faces second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, and faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.