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The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of George Floyd’s death, resumes Tuesday with new testimony from an MMA fighter who witnessed Floyd’s arrest.
Donald Williams, 33, a wrestler and mixed martial artist who said he worked with athletes and Minneapolis police officers on leave, was arrested in Floyd’s arrest on his way to the Cup Foods convenience store on May 25, 2020.
Williams will continue his testimony – which could provide crucial insight into the potential cause of death – as the two sides argue whether Floyd was killed by the officer through mechanical asphyxiation or due to a cardiac arrhythmia exacerbated by methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system before the arrest. .
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During her first testimony on Monday, Williams described various chokes and how they are used. He described Chauvin’s position with his knee on Floyd’s neck as a “blood strangulation”. Arriving outside the store, Williams said he noticed two police vehicles and a commotion.
“I noticed there were two police cars there… I thought something was going on, should I go back to my car or not?” Williams said at the stand. He then described how he heard Floyd in distress, saying, “My stomach hurts, I can’t breathe, my head hurts, I can’t breathe… he begged them.”
In this image from the video, Witness Donald Williams answers questions as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presides Monday, March 29, 2021, in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, who died from George Floyd to the Hennepin The courthouse in Minneapolis County, Minnesota. Williams was testifying to what he saw of Floyd’s arrest. (Short TV via AP, swimming pool)
“I felt the officer at the top was anxious to get the final choke while he was at the top. Sometimes you could choke yourself in blood and not know you were choking until you were. that you’re unconscious, ”Williams said, referring to Chauvin, who had his knee pressed against Floyd’s neck.
Drawing on his training at the Minnesota Academy of Martial Arts, Williams said he observed three factors about restraint: the position of the knee on the neck, the body movements that occur when the knee was on the neck and what was the condition. of Floyd “while undergoing this torture.”
“One was that the neck was diagonally across the throat, which on a choke of blood you nail the side of the neck,” Williams said. “You want to nail down the side of the neck, cut off your person’s breathing flow, then to tighten up the choke you hit different shimmies, which I felt the officer above was stalling, to get the final choke … while he was on top to get the choke. “
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Williams said he asked to check Floyd’s pulse and was “pissed off” by the way another officer, Tou Thao, described Floyd’s reaction to the restraint, saying the officer told spectators that ‘he kept backing, “That’s what drugs do to you.”
“Just like in MMA, you could tell when someone is tired or you can tell when someone is choking or things like that…” Williams said, describing how “Floyd’s breathing was getting extremely heavy. , extremely difficult for him to breathe. “
This police body camera image shows people gathering as former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was recorded resting his knee on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes as the spectators were yelling at Chauvin to get off and Floyd saying he couldn’t breathe on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis. (Minneapolis Police Department via AP)
“And you can actually hear it,” he continued. “You could see him struggling to find it hard to breathe as he tried to breathe and he could barely move as he tried to get it.
In his opening statement on Monday, Chauvin defense attorney Eric Nelson told jurors that the Hennepin County medical examiner initially said it was a medical event – not as a result compression on the neck. Nelson went further by claiming that there was no evidence, bruising or injury in the neck or windpipe area and had nothing to do with asphyxiation.
He claimed the government was unhappy with this finding and sought out generally unused outside experts to refute their own county medical examiner’s finding.
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The Hennepin County medical examiner determined that Floyd’s cause of death was “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement, restraint and neck compression.” The mode of death has been listed as “homicide”. Other important conditions listed include “arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease; fentanyl poisoning; recent methamphetamine use ”.
Floyd’s family later hired private doctors to perform an independent autopsy, which listed the cause of death as “mechanical asphyxiation” and the mode of death as “homicide.”
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