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The first witness in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, a 911 dispatcher, said on Monday that she alerted a police supervisor on May 25 after seeing Minneapolis cops pin George Floyd to the ground live in a security video. .
The dispatcher, Jena Scurry, said it was an “instinctive instinct” that led her to call a police sergeant who was a supervisor for officers at the scene. She said she glanced at the wall dispatch screens between the other calls and saw a police car drive past Cup Foods, a convenience store. A Cup Foods employee called the police alleging Floyd attempted to pass a fake $ 20 bill.
Scurry said his job is mainly to listen and it is rare for a dispatcher to witness an incident in which police are at a scene. She said she only observed police at a scene three or four times in her seven-year career.
Scurry said police held Floyd for so long that she asked someone if his “screens froze because they hadn’t changed” and “she was told he wasn’t. frozen”.
Scurry was one of three witnesses to testify on Monday. The other two witnesses were spectators, Alisha Oyler, who worked at a Speedway station across the street, and Donald Williams II, who was on his way to Cup Foods. Williams will return to the witness stand when the trial resumes on Tuesday.
Ms Scurry said May 25 was the first day she contacted a supervisor regarding such circumstances. Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell said in his opening remarks that after Scurry saw the video of Floyd’s arrest, “she did something that she had never done in her career: she called the police over police. “
She said that once she saw people moving in the video, she worried that “something was wrong”.
“My gut was telling me that something is wrong. Something is wrong,” Mr. Scurry told Minnesota Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank. “I don’t know what, but something was wrong.”
She said she wasn’t sure exactly how long the restraint lasted but that it was an extended period. Frank asked Scurry to watch the video of Floyd’s arrest and explain what parts she saw. A recording of Scurry’s call to the sergeant was also played.
“I don’t know, you can call me a snitch if you want,” she told the supervisor, according to the audio of the call. “I don’t know if they used the force or not. They got something from the bottom of the team, and they all sat on this man.”
During cross-examination, Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, asked Scurry to point out where in the video she could see the team’s car moving back and forth.
In his opening statements, Blackwell told the jury that the number to remember was 9 minutes, 29 seconds – the time Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck. Less than an hour after the trial began, prosecutors released video of a Chauvin bystander holding his knee to Floyd’s neck.
“I have a stomach ache. My neck hurts. Everything hurts, ”says Floyd. He also said to Chauvin: “I can’t breathe, officer.” The phrase “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry for activists and protesters around the world after Floyd’s death.
Onlookers can be heard repeatedly yelling at the officers to get off Floyd, who was Black. One man said, “You shot him. At least let him breathe.”
A woman, identifying herself as an employee of the town’s fire department, yells at Chauvin to check Floyd’s pulse.
Chauvin, who is white, “didn’t let go” and “didn’t stand up,” even after Floyd, who was handcuffed, said 27 times that he couldn’t breathe and became immobile, Blackwell said.
Chauvin is charged with unintentional second degree murder, third degree murder and manslaughter. He and the three other Minneapolis police officers who were at the scene were fired a day after Floyd’s death.
“He put his knees on his neck and back, squeaking and crushing him, until the very breath, no ladies and gentlemen, until very life was kicked out from him,” said Blackwell.
Blackwell said Floyd did not die of a heart attack or opioid overdose, as the defense claimed, and that the county medical examiner, who was due to testify, found no evidence heart injury. The state said it plans to call a medical examiner, pulmonologist, cardiologist and toxicologist as witnesses, as well as doctors specializing in intensive care, emergency medicine and internal medicine. The state will also seek the testimony of experts – including Police Chief Medaria Arradondo – who will testify that Chauvin used lethal or excessive force against Floyd.
Nelson, Chauvin’s attorney, said in his opening statement that “the case is clearly over 9 minutes and 29 seconds” and that there are over 50,000 pieces of evidence. He also referred to “reasonable doubt”, saying, “At the end of this matter, we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about doubt.
“There is no political or social cause in this courtroom,” Nelson said.
Nelson said Floyd resisted arrest and ingested drugs to hide them from police. Chauvin arrived to help other officers who were “struggling” to get Floyd into a squad car as the crowd around them grew larger and angrier.
“You will learn that Derek Chauvin did exactly what he was trained to do in his 19 year career,” said Nelson. “The use of force is not attractive, but it is a necessary component of policing.”
The second witness, Oyler, 23, was interviewed by Steve Schleicher, another outside prosecution lawyer, who, like Blackwell, works on a voluntary basis. Oyler recorded a series of brief videos of Floyd’s arrest while working at a gas station across the street. Oyler testified that she voluntarily turned over the videos to the police. She told Schleicher that she recorded the videos because the police “are always playing with people … and it’s not fair.”
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