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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Special Report -> 
George Floyd remembered as ‘very loving’ and a ‘gentle giant’
    2020-06-05  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

ON May 25, George Floyd was scheduled to meet with his friend Wallace White to talk about getting involved with MAD DADS — Men Against Destruction Defending Against Drugs and Social Disorder, but he couldn’t make it. The next day, Floyd was dead.

Floyd, 46, died in the city he moved to for a better life, his last moments caught on video. While being arrested, Floyd was held down by a Minneapolis police officer’s knee for nearly nine minutes. A video captured by a bystander shows Floyd pleading that he is in pain and can’t breathe. Then, his eyes shut and the pleas stop. He was pronounced dead shortly after.

Minneapolis police officers arrested Floyd after a deli employee called 911, accusing him of buying cigarettes with a counterfeit US$20 bill. Seventeen minutes after the first squad car arrived at the scene, Floyd was unconscious and pinned beneath three police officers, showing no signs of life.

Floyd died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by an officer’s knee in an episode that was recorded on video by a bystander.

The video captured officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for several minutes, despite his pleas that he could not breathe.

The account from Darnella Frazier, who filmed the now-viral video showing part of the police encounter and said she watched Floyd being suffocated, differs from that of the police, who said Floyd was stopped because he matched the description of a suspect in a forgery case, resisted arrest and then suffered “medical distress.”

In the video she posted on Facebook, Frazier said that she was on her way to see friends May 25 when she saw Floyd outside of a grocery store on the south side of Minneapolis. Police had him pinned to the ground by his neck, she said. In her telling, Floyd’s face was being pressed so hard against the ground by the officer that his nose was bleeding.

She said she began recording the encounter, and that Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck until he stopped moving and then later carried his motionless body away on a stretcher. She later posted the video on Facebook.

The video begins with Floyd lying on the ground with Chauvin’s knee pressed onto his neck. A voice, seemingly from a bystander, says “You’re going to just sit there with your knee on his neck?”

Floyd can be seen and heard voicing distress and saying repeatedly, “Please. Please. I can’t breathe. Please. I can’t move.” A bystander’s voice can be heard telling police, “You got him down. Let him breathe.”

Minutes later, Floyd appears motionless on the ground. A bystander again addresses police saying, “Bro, he’s not even f—— moving!” Another voice is heard saying, “Get off of his neck!” One person asks, “Did you kill him?”

Floyd’s eyes appear closed and his head lies on the ground. An ambulance arrives and Floyd is loaded onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.

“The police killed him, bro, right in front of everybody,” Frazier said on video posted on Facebook. “He was crying, telling them like, ‘I can’t breathe,’ and everything. They killed this man.”

Floyd’s life had its highs and lows, but his friends and family said he was “a gentle giant.”

Floyd spent most of his life in Houston, Texas, and grew up in the Third Ward. While attending Jack Yates High School, Floyd, who stood 6 feet, 6 inches (about 2 meters) tall, played basketball and was a star tight end on the football team, playing in the 1992 state championship.

After high school, head basketball coach George Walker recruited Floyd to play for him at South Florida State College in Avon Park, Florida. Floyd was a student there from 1993 to 1995, Walker told CNN.

Floyd was a coachable kid with a big heart, according to Walker’s wife, Gloria.

Of all the college athletes on the school’s team, she said Floyd had her attention the most.

“He was never one that tried to blame others for his own mistakes,” she said.

Donnell Cooper, one of Floyd’s former classmates, said Floyd impressed everyone with his presence on the field and humility off it.

Milton Carney, another longtime friend of Floyd, said he was always gentle.

“Anybody who knows him will tell you he’s not confrontational,” he said.

Floyd was known by friends and family for his faith and dedication to his church community. Church leaders said he helped organize basketball charity events, bible study sessions and other related activities.

Former NBA player Stephen Jackson, who grew up in Texas not too far from Floyd, called him his twin. Even when Jackson’s athletic career soared, he said he kept in touch with Floyd.

In 2007, Floyd was charged with armed robbery and sentenced to five years in prison as part of a plea deal in 2009. Jackson said his friend moved to Minneapolis to start a new life and was working several jobs.

“He’d been through a lot of stuff in his life and to make it out after you rehabilitate yourself and you’re intelligent enough to know I can’t go back to the same surroundings because it’s going to bring me back to the same spot,” he said.

Floyd was known in the community as a protector and a provider who didn’t have a hateful bone in his body, according to Jackson. He got along with everybody and seldom wanted anything in return for helping someone out, Jackson said.

Floyd is a father to two daughters, the youngest is 6, according to Jackson.

Jackson vows to support his friend’s children and “fill in for Floyd” and said he wants to make sure they are provided for.

Jovanni Thunstrom hired Floyd to work security at his Minneapolis restaurant Conga Latin Bistro and leased him a duplex apartment. Thunstrom said he was a friendly, hard worker who worked extra hours and was loved by the staff and regulars.

Floyd and the rest of the restaurant’s staff were out of work since the coronavirus shut down the state’s restaurants.

Thunstrom said he last saw Floyd a week ago to collect rent and to talk about the restaurant’s reopening plans.

“It broke my heart,” he said of Floyd’s death.

Minnesota prosecutors charged three more officers Wednesday in the slaying of Floyd and announced a higher charge of second-degree murder for Chauvin.

State Attorney General Keith Ellison announced the new charges as outrage and civil unrest has now spread to all 50 states, linking Floyd’s murder to a long history of police brutality involving unarmed black citizens.

“Nine days ago, the world watched Floyd utter his very last words, ‘I can’t breathe,’ as he pled for his life. The world heard Floyd call out for his mama and cry out, ‘Don’t kill me,’” Ellison said.

“George Floyd mattered,” Ellison said. “He was loved, his family was important and his life had value.”

Chauvin, 44, now faces a second-degree murder charge, which carries a sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

He was already charged last Friday with third-degree murder, a count that carries a maximum of 25 years in prison and doesn’t require a show of intent. Both murder charges and a further charge of second-degree manslaughter were listed on his amended complaint.

Chauvin’s former colleagues who assisted with the fatal arrest — J. Alexander Kueng, 26, Thomas Lane, 37, and Tou Thao, 34 — were charged for the first time Wednesday with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and were taken into custody.

All four officers were fired a day after the incident, but no arrests were made until Chauvin was taken into custody last Friday.

Floyd’s family praised Ellison’s announcement.

“This is a significant step forward on the road to justice, and we are gratified that this important action was brought before George Floyd’s body was laid to rest. That is a source of peace for George’s family in this painful time,” their lawyer Benjamin Crump said.

Crump said Ellison’s office told them the investigation would continue and the charges against Chauvin would be bumped up to first-degree murder “if the evidence supports it.”

(SD-Agencies)

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