"If he had not accepted the ticket, this could have been avoided,"
lamented Christopher Martin, 19, in his statement to the court on the third day of the trial for the death of George Floyd after being detained by a police officer from Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020.
Martin was the clerk at the store where the 46-year-old black man tried to pay with a fake $ 20 bill, prompting police to rush to the premises.
This Wednesday he assured that he lived the arrest with "disbelief and guilt."
Derek Chauvin, the police officer on trial, could spend 40 years in jail if found guilty of the death of Floyd, whom he pinned to the ground by pressing his knee to his neck while the man yelled desperately that he could not breathe.
The testimony of this teenager is one more in the increasingly long list of witnesses who have expressed in the two previous days a sense of helplessness and guilt for having witnessed the death of Floyd, which generated protests around the world against police violence and systemic racism.
[An unpublished video and emotional testimony shake the first day of the trial for the death of George Floyd]
Prosecutors asked Martin questions to help establish the sequence of events that led to Floyd's arrest, and also played video from security cameras at the store, which goes by the Cup Foods name.
In them, Floyd was seen inside the establishment for about 10 minutes.
Martin stated that he immediately realized that the $ 20 Floyd gave him in exchange for a pack of cigarettes was counterfeit, but he accepted it even though the store would later take that amount from his paycheck.
He said he was initially only planning to put the bill for the cigarettes on his "bill," but then he thought about it and spoke to a manager, who sent Martin outside to ask Floyd to come back to the store.
George Floyd case: this was the first day of trial against former police officer Derek Chauvin
March 29, 202102: 21
He said the manager asked another employee to call police after Floyd and a passenger in Floyd's vehicle twice refused to return to the premises to resolve the problem.
[How George Floyd's death began to "change the world"]
Later, Floyd was arrested by police, where Chauvin pinned him down and held his knee to his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds while he lay handcuffed face down on the pavement, complaining that he could not breathe.
Floyd was later pronounced dead at a Minneapolis hospital.
Martin said inside the store he asked Floyd if he played baseball, and Floyd said he played football, but it took Floyd a while to answer, so according to the witness, "it looked like he was drugged." although he described Floyd as friendly and chatty.
Drawing by Cup Foods store clerk Christopher Martin testifies that George Floyd paid with counterfeit $ 20 bills, while surveillance video of the store plays on a screen, on the third day of the trial against a former US officer. Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 31, 2021.REUTERS / Jane Rosenberg
The defense has argued that Chauvin applied the techniques that were taught to him in the academy and that Floyd's death was not caused by the knee in his neck, as prosecutors claim, but by a combination of illegal drug use, heart disease, high blood pressure and the adrenaline rushing through her body.
Martin came out as people were gathering on the sidewalk and yelling at officers, then he called his mother, who lived in an upstairs apartment, and told her to stay inside before he picked up his phone and started talking. Record.
[“I can't breathe!” A black man dies in Minneapolis after being pinned down by a white cop]
He said he saw Officer Tou Thao, one of three other officers who attended the scene besides Chauvin, push one of his co-workers and that he also stopped another man who was trying to defend himself after being pushed by Thao.
Later, Martin deleted his recording and explained that the ambulance did not take the quickest route to the hospital, so he thought that Floyd had died.
"I just didn't want to have to show [the video] to anyone," he
recalled.
Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter.
The most serious charge he faces carries up to 40 years in prison.
On Tuesday, a parade of witnesses told prosecutors that they and other passersby were angered when they repeatedly begged Chauvin to remove the knee from Floyd's neck, but the former police officer refused to relax and Thao forced those who were standing back. on the sidewalk and tried to intervene.
[House of Representatives passes police reform in honor of George Floyd]
One of the people at the scene, Minneapolis firefighter Genevieve Hansen, cried on the stand as she remembered being prevented from using her first aid training to help Floyd.
"You could see he was going through tremendous pain," says witness in George Floyd's death.
March 31, 202101: 40
"There was a man who was being killed,"
said Hansen, who testified in his uniform and detailed how he was trained to apply emergency treatments.
“I could have provided medical attention.
And this human was denied that right, "he lamented.
On Tuesday, prosecutors played video recorded on a cell phone by another witness, 18-year-old Alyssa Funari, showing bystanders yelling and yelling at Chauvin after Floyd stopped moving.
The footage also showed Hansen, the Minneapolis firefighter, calmly walking over to Thao and offering to help, before he ordered him back onto the sidewalk.
[They agree to compensate George Floyd's family with 27 million dollars]
"I felt like there was really nothing I could do as a spectator," Funari said through tears.
Chauvin seemed indifferent to her pleas, the teenager who recorded the viral video that sparked nationwide protests, Darnella Frazier, 18, said Tuesday.
Chauvin gave the people who looked helplessly a "cold" and "ruthless" look, he testified.
"He didn't care. It seemed like he didn't care what we were saying," she said through tears.
The testimony of the prosecution witnesses was apparently intended to show that Chauvin had multiple opportunities to think about what he was doing and change his position.
["I called the police to report policemen": the shocking testimonies on the second day of the trial for the death of George Floyd]
Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, has repeatedly tried to present evidence that bystanders were getting agitated.
The witnesses stated that no passer-by interfered with the police.
