Pill contained fentanyl, meth and George Floyd’s DNA, witnesses testify
MINNEAPOLIS — A partial pill found in the back of a Minneapolis police squad car at the intersection where George Floyd died tested positive for fentanyl and methamphetamine along with Floyd’s DNA, according to combined testimony Wednesday from forensic scientists in Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.
Chauvin’s defense strategy has long contended that Floyd died on May 25 at 38th and Chicago in South Minneapolis more from illicit drug use and other medical factors than how the now-fired police officer pinned Floyd to the pavement for more than nine minutes until being rendered unconscious.
Two scientists with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and a third scientist from a Pennsylvania lab rounded out the day’s prosecution witnesses. One of the BCA scientists explained why the squad car Floyd resisted entering was searched two days after the arrest without any suspected drugs being seized only for that evidence to be found during a defense-requested search seven months later by the agency.
Mckenzie Anderson testified that on May 27 she searched and documented items in Floyd’s SUV and the squad car but without being told by investigators to be especially alert for evidence of drugs. No drug evidence was recovered, she said.
A second BCA search of the SUV requested in December by the state Attorney General’s Office led to two small white pills being recovered from the center console. Also collected from the driver’s side floor was a box for Suboxone, “a prescription medication used for adults with an opioid addiction,” she said. An unopened packet of the drug was seized from the driver’s side seat, Anderson said.
A search of the squad car, also on May 27, led to no drug evidence being seized despite Anderson seeing a
white spot on the rear passenger floor that appeared to be a pill.
Anderson said she didn’t seize that item because “at the time, I didn’t have any information that I was looking for a pill . ... I wasn’t sure what it was, or if it came off of somebody’s shoe, so at the time I didn’t give it any forensic significance based on the information that I had (and was) focusing on the blood that was on the back seat.”
The defense-initiated search by the BCA of the squad led to the discovery of what appeared to be most of a pill and pill remnants.
The DNA from one of the pills matched Floyd’s DNA, Anderson said.
The same DNA match was made with several bloodstains that were located and tested, again having come from Floyd during the time he was thrashing about in the squad.
Frank walked Anderson through numerous questions designed to show that the squad’s interior remained secure and absent of tampering despite so many months passing between the vehicle’s two searches.
Defense attorney Eric Nelson declined to cross-examine Anderson.
Breahna Giles, a chemical forensic scientist for the BCA, then testified that the pills found inside the SUV contained methamphetamine and fentanyl, both addictive opioids. A partial pill and other traces of it tested positive for methamphetamine. In a larger pill, another substance was detected, but there was not enough of it to conclusively identify it, she said.
Defense attorney Nelson asked Giles whether the trace substance was fentanyl. “I can’t confirm,” she said.
“You can’t say it was or wasn’t fentanyl?” “Yes,” she said.
A glass pipe from the SUV also tested positive for THC, the active substance in marijuana, Giles said.
Susan Neith, a forensic chemist at NMS labs in Pennsylvania, tested the two pills found in the SUV and the partial found in the squad. All three pills contained a fentanyl concentration of less than 1%, which she said is common. The pills contained a methamphetamine concentration of 1.9 to 2.9%, which she said was atypically low.
“The majority of the time I see 90 to 100% methamphetamine,” she said
Earlier, a senior agent for the BCA testified that murder defendant Derek Chauvin kept his weight on a handcuffed George Floyd’s neck for minutes after Floyd was no longer talking or moving during the incident late last spring.
Having earlier reviewed the various video sources recording the encounter at the Minneapolis intersection and watching segments of them in court, special agent James Reyerson said that Chauvin’s knee went on the back of Floyd’s neck shortly after 8:19 p.m.
Floyd fell silent shortly before 8:24 p.m. and stopped moving about a minute later.
At that point, prosecutor Matthew Frank asked Reyerson, “Does it appear that Officer Chauvin is using his weight to hold Mr. Floyd down?” The special agent replied, “Yes, it does.”