George Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, cried this Thursday while testifying during the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who killed the African American during a May 2020 detention.Courteney, 45, revealed that she and her boyfriend started taking opioids to help overcome chronic pain, but that they continued to take the substances even after the prescriptions ended.
The woman, who had been in a relationship with Floyd for about three years, tearfully recalled the moment they met at a charity.Paramedics who rescued George Floyd said in court that he did not breathe or have a pulse when they arrived at the scene.
“I thought they were dead,” said Derek Smith, one of the doctors.
When Smith arrived, Chauvin was pressing his knee to the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man in handcuffs, about nine minutes ago. The case sparked global protests against police brutality.
Chauvin, 45, pleaded not guilty to the murder charges. At the trial, his lawyers argued that Floyd’s death, which the county coroner considered a homicide at the hands of the police, was actually an overdose caused by the fentanyl found in the blood at the autopsy.
Prosecutors in the Minnesota attorney general’s office told the jury that they will hear evidence to contradict this, including his girlfriend’s testimony about his drug tolerance, and that Floyd’s drug use is irrelevant to the charges against Chauvin.
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