George Floyd had at least 8 civilian onlookers, including a Minneapolis firefighter, pleading for his life … and this newly released police body cam shows the panic and horror they all felt.
The footage comes from the body cam of now ex-officer Tou Thao — he’s the one who was doing crowd control during Floyd’s arrest. The video shows the initial attempt to put Floyd into a patrol car and, seconds later, the 3 officers — including Derek Chauvin — taking him down onto the pavement.
As soon as George was on the street, with Chauvin’s knee on his neck, Thao went straight to the curb where a handful of onlookers could immediately tell Floyd was in life-threatening distress.
While one young woman, Darnella Frazier, recorded the original video the world saw of Floyd’s killing … the most vocal citizen on the curbside was a black man who repeatedly asked Thao if he was just going to watch the other officers “choke him like that?”
Another onlooker, who identified herself as a Minneapolis firefighter, made multiple attempts to get a closer look … and yelled at Thao, “Does he have a pulse? Show me his pulse!”
What’s most interesting about this angle of the incident is you can see and feel the crowd’s worry increase with every minute the officers are on top of George. It was painfully obvious to them a man was dying, and they got more and more agitated as the clock ticked through the 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
As you know, Thao and 2 other ex-officers, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Keung, are charged with aiding and abetting murder … while Chauvin’s been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, as well as an additional count of second-degree murder.