Floyd’s ex-girlfriend details their struggle with opioid addiction

Courteney Ross, who was dating George Floyd for nearly three years before his death in May, delivered tearful testimony Thursday about their shared struggle with an opioid addiction.

Ross, 45, said she and Floyd had started taking opioids when they were prescribed for chronic pain, but that both had continued to take the pills after the prescriptions had run out. They tried to stop using the drugs many times and had sought out various treatments, she said, but they relapsed as recently as March 2020.

That month, Ross said, Floyd was hospitalized for several days after she found him doubled over in pain from an overdose. She recalled taking a new pill with him that month, the contents of which she did not know and which had a more stimulating effect.

Later that month, she thought they had both managed to quit again, but in the weeks before he died in May, a change in Floyd’s behavior made her think that he had again begun using.

“We got addicted and tried really hard to break that addiction many times,” she said. “When you know someone who suffers from any

type of addiction, you can start to kind of see changes when they’re using again.”

Ross was the first witness called by prosecutors on the fourth day of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who has been charged with murder in Floyd’s death. Much of her testimony focused on the couple’s addiction, seemingly an attempt by prosecutors to get out in front of the argument by Chauvin’s lawyer that Floyd’s drug use may have led to his death or caused him to struggle more with officers as they tried to put him in a police car.

Floyd had been working as the head of security at a nightclub shortly before his death but had lost the job when the club closed because of the coronavirus, she said. He had tested positive for COVID-19 in April, a doctor wrote in Floyd’s autopsy report.

Prosecutors had called Ross to the stand and were the first to ask her about Floyd’s drug use, seemingly in an effort to head off the argument from Chauvin’s lawyer that drugs could have caused Floyd’s death or led him to struggle more with the police.

An autopsy by the Hennepin County medical examiner found that Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system when he died.

COURT TV Witness Courteney Ross, who was dating George Floyd before his death in May, testifies Thursday in the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis.