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How George Floyd Died, and What Happened Next
Mr. Floyd, a Black man, died in May 2020 after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by Minneapolis police officers in an episode that was captured on video, touching off nationwide protests.
The death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, in May 2020 drew widespread outrage after a video circulated online showing Officer Derek Chauvin holding his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck on a Minneapolis street corner as he gasped for breath.
Mr. Floyd’s death spurred nationwide protests against police brutality and a reckoning over everything from public monuments to sports team names.
Mr. Chauvin and the three other officers involved in Mr. Floyd’s death — Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng — were fired and charged with a variety of crimes.
Mr. Chauvin was convicted of murder in April 2021 and was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison.
The other three officers were each sentenced to several years in prison.
Here is a recap of what has happened in the case.
A video of the arrest shocked the world and led to weeks of protests.
Mr. Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground under the knee of Mr. Chauvin, who is white, for more than nine minutes. The county medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by a combination of the officers’ use of force, the presence of fentanyl and methamphetamine in Mr. Floyd’s system and his underlying health conditions.
Bystander video of the encounter quickly went viral.
The disturbing video incited large protests against police brutality and systemic racism in Minneapolis and across the United States in the months that followed, leading to a racial justice movement not seen since the civil rights protests of the 1960s. The National Guard was activated in at least 21 states, and cities announced curfews as protesters filled the streets for demonstrations that sometimes turned destructive.
Law enforcement was criticized for responding to the protests — a majority of which were peaceful — with force, by spraying tear gas and shooting rubber bullets at protesters, and conducting mass arrests.
After the video of the arrest surfaced, the Minneapolis Police Department fired Mr. Chauvin and the three other officers involved.
Video from police body cameras shows how a call about a $20 bill turned fatal.
Around 8 p.m. on the day Mr. Floyd died, Minneapolis police officers responded to a call from a store clerk who said Mr. Floyd had paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill, the Police Department said.
In an initial statement, the police said that Mr. Floyd “appeared to be under the influence.” It said that officers ordered him to step away from his car, and that he resisted them after he got out. Officers “noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress,” the statement read, after which they called an ambulance.
The statement lacked critical details about the fatal encounter, and bystander video and officer body camera footage released months later helped to fill in the blanks.
The body camera footage showed police officers approaching a car in which Mr. Floyd was sitting in the driver’s seat. In the footage, Mr. Lane, one of the officers, taps his flashlight on the window and asks Mr. Floyd to show his hands. After being asked several times, Mr. Floyd eventually opens the car door, while apologizing.
Six seconds after the door opens, Mr. Lane draws his gun, points it at Mr. Floyd and says, “Put your [expletive] hands up right now.” Without explaining the reason for the stop, he pulls Mr. Floyd out of the car.
After removing Mr. Floyd from the vehicle, Mr. Lane and Mr. Kueng handcuff him and walk him across the street to their squad car. Mr. Floyd protests and resists sitting in the back seat, saying he is claustrophobic, and officers try to force him in. He pushes himself out the other side of the vehicle, saying he is going to lie on the ground.
Three officers pin Mr. Floyd facedown — Mr. Chauvin kneeling on his neck, Mr. Kueng kneeling on his upper legs and holding his wrist, and Mr. Lane holding Mr. Floyd’s legs. (Mr. Thao was keeping bystanders away.)
Mr. Floyd began saying repeatedly that he could not breathe. Mr. Chauvin kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for nine and a half minutes.
Six minutes after the officers put Mr. Floyd facedown, and only after bystanders shouted at them to attend to him, Mr. Kueng checks for Mr. Floyd’s pulse and says he cannot feel it. All three of the officers continue to hold Mr. Floyd in a position that restricts his breathing.
Two minutes later, emergency responders arrive, and the medics load him into an ambulance. He was pronounced dead that night.
The officers were fired, and then all charged with crimes.
The day after the killing, large protests erupted in Minneapolis and Mayor Jacob Frey announced that the four officers involved had been terminated.
Mr. Chauvin was arrested on May 29, 2020, and initially charged with third-degree murder. Within days, he had agreed to plead guilty, The New York Times reported in February 2021, but William P. Barr, then the U.S. attorney general, stepped in to reject the agreement, which had also included an assurance that Mr. Chauvin would not face federal civil rights charges.
Mr. Chauvin had said through his lawyer that his handling of Mr. Floyd’s arrest was a reasonable use of authorized force. The officer was the subject of at least 22 complaints or internal investigations during his more than 19 years at the department, one of which resulted in discipline.
After a weekslong trial, Mr. Chauvin was found guilty on April 20, 2021, of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. In June of that year, he was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison, less than the 30 years prosecutors had sought, but far more than what lawyers for Mr. Chauvin had requested: probation and the time he had already served. The earliest Mr. Chauvin could be eligible for release on parole, experts said, would be in 2035 or 2036, when he is close to 60 years old.
After the verdict was announced, Philonise Floyd, one of Mr. Floyd’s brothers, said, “We are able to breathe again.” President Biden also praised the verdict in a nationwide address, calling it a “too rare” step to deliver “basic accountability” for Black Americans.
The police used tear gas and other means to break up protests in Minneapolis.
After the release of the video of Mr. Floyd’s arrest, demonstrators poured into Minneapolis streets for several nights. Officers used tear gas and fired rubber bullets into the crowds. Images on television and social media had captured businesses being set on fire and people carrying goods out of a vandalized store.
State officials said a series of errors and misjudgments — including the Minneapolis police’s decision to abandon a precinct that protesters overtook and burned — had allowed demonstrators to create what Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota called “absolute chaos.”
In total, a five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustained extraordinary damage. Not since the 1992 unrest in Los Angeles had an American city suffered such destructive riots.
Protests also spread across the country to Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Louisville, Ky.
Reporting was contributed by Tim Arango, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Audra D. S. Burch, Maria Cramer, John Eligon, Manny Fernandez, Christine Hauser, Neil MacFarquhar, Kwame Opam, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Lucy Tompkins and Neil Vigdor.
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