George Floyd's girlfriend describes his hard life. A paramedic explains his harrowing death

In a particularly moving testimony, George Floyd's partner before his death told this Thursday during the fourth day of the trial against the former Minneapolis policeman, accused of taking the life of the 46-year-old black man, how the two met and the battle that they were fighting their addiction to opioids together.

"Our story is a classic story of how many people become addicted to opioids. We both suffer from chronic pain. Mine in his neck and his in his back," said

Courteney Ross

, 45, during the trial against the former officer. Derek Chauvin, who faces multiple murder charges.

Prosecutors put the woman on the stand in order to humanize Floyd in front of the jury and dismantle the version of Chauvin's lawyers, who

have maintained during the trial that the African-American did not die asphyxiated by the knee of the former policeman on his neck

, but because of underlying health problems derived from drug use.

Ross began his testimony recounting how she and Floyd met in 2017 at a center of the Salvation Army (

Salvation Army

in English) where Floyd was

working as a security guard.

She said that she had come there because the father of her children was staying at the charity.

She and the man had been having trouble, she said.

In this image obtained from a video, the witness Courteney Ross, ex-partner of George Floyd, testifies on the fourth day of the trial against Derek Chauvin on April 1, 2021.

Floyd came over to talk to her.

"Floyd had a great deep, husky southern voice," Ross recalled.

"He said, 'Sister, are you okay, sister?'

And I wasn't okay. I replied, 'No, I'm just waiting for the father of my children. He said,' Can I pray with you? '

The defense has been adamant that Chauvin only did his duty by restraining Floyd with his knee, after he was called to the Cup Foods store in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Floyd allegedly tried to pay for a pack of cigarettes with a US dollar bill. $ 20 fake.

Floyd's ex-partner said Thursday

that the two had "worked very hard to break that addiction many times."

“Addiction, in my opinion, is a lifelong struggle.

[...] It is not something that just comes and goes.

It's something I will deal with forever, "she said. The woman described how in March 2020 she took Floyd to an emergency room because he had a severe stomach ache and there she learned he had overdosed.

["Disbelief and Guilt": Store Clerk Testifies to George Floyd Handing a Counterfeit $ 20 Bill]

Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, the two spent a lot of time together, and Floyd was not using, he said.

Two months later, in May, the fatal encounter with the police occurred.

An autopsy found fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd's body.

Medical experts consulted in the trial have said that while the level of fentanyl in your system could be fatal for some, people who use the drug regularly can develop tolerance.

Another of the powerful testimonies of this fourth day was that of a paramedic who was called to the scene where Floyd lay motionless, after begging Chauvin for several minutes that he could not breathe with the ex-agent's knee compressing his neck.

In this image obtained from a video, Derek Smith, one of the paramedics who treated George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, is observed as he testifies in the trial against former police officer Derek Chauvin.

AP

Derek Smith, a Hennepin County paramedic, said he thought Floyd "was dead" when he assessed his health at the scene on May 25.

Smith testified that there were three officers on top of Floyd when he arrived.

When he inspected the man, he said, he did not detect his pulse.

"I thought he was dead," he told prosecutors.

At that moment, Smith said he looked at his partner and said:

"I think he's dead, I want us to get him out of here."

Then he said resuscitation treatments were started on him in the back of the ambulance.

Seth Bravinder, another paramedic who testified Thursday, said Floyd was loaded into the ambulance so that he could receive care "in an optimal environment," but also because bystanders "seemed very upset on the sidewalk" and there was some screaming.

"In my mind, at least, we wanted to get away from that," he explained.

"You could see he was going through tremendous pain," says witness in George Floyd's death.

March 31, 202101: 40

Chauvin's attorney, Eric Nelson, has argued that police at the scene were distracted by

what they perceived as a growing and increasingly hostile crowd

.

Several viral videos taken by bystanders who have testified in previous days showed around 15 people at the scene not far from where Floyd lay on the pavement.

Bravinder said that after driving the ambulance three blocks and going to the back to help his partner, the monitor Floyd was hooked up to showed a flat line: his heart had stopped.

The paramedic stated that they were never able to regain a pulse.

With information from NBC News and The Associated Press