The teenage store clerk who first confronted George Floyd about his use of a fake $20 bill said in court on Wednesday that he felt “disbelief and guilt” when he saw Derek Chauvin kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck in front of the store after a co-worker called 911.
The clerk, Christopher Martin, 19, said he had quickly recognized that the $20 bill that Mr. Floyd used to buy cigarettes at the Cup Foods convenience store on May 25 appeared to be fake. At the urging of a manager, Mr. Martin twice went outside to Mr. Floyd’s car and asked him to come inside the store to pay for the cigarettes or talk with the manager.
Mr. Martin said he thought Mr. Floyd, unlike a friend of Mr. Floyd’s who had tried to use a fake bill earlier that day, had not realized that the bill was fake. “I thought I’d be doing him a favor” by accepting it, Mr. Martin said.
He said the store’s policy at the time was that clerks who accepted a fake bill had to pay to replace it themselves. Mr. Martin said that after Mr. Floyd and a passenger in his car refused to come back into the store, he offered to pay the store for it himself, but his manager later asked another worker to call the police.
Minutes later, Mr. Floyd was handcuffed on the ground under several Minneapolis police officers, and Mr. Martin could be seen on surveillance video with his hands raised over his head.
“If I would’ve just not taken the bill, this could’ve been avoided,” Mr. Martin testified.
During his testimony, prosecutors played surveillance footage from inside Cup Foods for the first time, showing Mr. Floyd chatting and laughing with shoppers and employees as he moved around the store. At one point, he purchased a banana, and at another point he was holding what appeared to be cash.
Mr. Martin said that Mr. Floyd had been friendly when he walked into the store and that the two had briefly discussed sports, but that Mr. Floyd had struggled to finish his sentences and appeared to be high on a drug.
An autopsy determined that Mr. Floyd was intoxicated with fentanyl and had recently used methamphetamines, but prosecutors have argued that the amount of drugs would not have been fatal for him because he had built up a tolerance over years of addiction. Medical experts and discussion of the autopsy are expected to be a major focus of the trial in the coming weeks.
About 30 minutes after the clerk called 911, Mr. Floyd was taken away on a stretcher. Not long after, he was pronounced dead at a hospital.
In body-camera footage shown for the first time Wednesday, Chauvin told an upset witness, “We’ve got to control this guy because he is a sizable guy.”
Here’s what to know:
- Charles McMillian, the witness who started crying while video played, said he spoke with Chauvin five days before Floyd’s death. “I told him, like I tell all, ‘Officer, at the end of the day, you go home to your family safe, and let the next person go home to their family safe,’ ” McMillian said.
Prosecutors on Wednesday showed the jury body-camera footage from former Minneapolis police officers Thomas Lane, Alexander Keung and Tou Thao that was released last summer. All three were fired along with Chauvin and are charged with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter.
The footage began with Lane confronting Floyd in a parked vehicle, pointing a gun and telling Floyd to put his hands up without explaining what the officer was investigating.
A distraught Floyd begs officers not to kill him: “Please don’t shoot me, man,” he pleads from the car. “I just lost my mom, man.”
Officers try for several minutes to get Floyd in a vehicle as he struggles and protests that he is claustrophobic.
“I’m not a bad guy,” Floyd says.
The video also captures Floyd protesting as he’s pinned to the ground in handcuffs, saying he cannot breathe and telling his mom he loves her.
As Floyd was being detained by police, witness Charles McMillian, 61, said Wednesday that he told him: “Get on in the car because you can’t win.”
McMillian said he was trying to make the situation with Floyd easier based on his own interactions with police.
He said he understood that once placed in a police car, “You’re done.”
Floyd can be heard in the video saying that he’s scared and claustrophobic as officers continued to force him in the car.
McMillian can be heard off to the side telling Floyd he was going to have a heart attack based on how he was