A paramedic who assessed George Floyd before Derek Chauvin lifted his knee off the handcuffed black man’s neck revealed today that he didn’t feel a pulse, telling the court: ‘I thought he was dead.’
The paramedic, Derek Smith, took the stand on Thursday as the jury was shown shocking new images of EMTs loading Floyd into an ambulance and attempting to resuscitate him after he was driven from the scene at Cup Foods on May 25, 2020.
Smith and his partner, paramedic Seth Bravinder, were both asked by the prosecution to explain what was happening in graphic video and stills of Floyd being placed on a stretcher and treated in the ambulance.
Some of the images came from video recorded by witnesses on the scene, while others came from the body camera of officer Thomas Lane, who rode with Floyd to the hospital.
Asked to describe Floyd’s condition, Smith said: ‘In lay terms, I thought he was dead,’ as the prosecution showed a screengrab of him checking for Floyd’s pulse.
Video showed Smith gesturing to Chauvin to remove his knee from Floyd’s neck so they could put his limp body on a stretcher.
George Floyd’s girlfriend Courteney Ross broke down in tears within minutes of taking the stand at Derek Chauvin’s trial murder trial on Thursday as she described how they first met in 2017. Floyd and Ross are pictured right in an undated photo
Video then showed paramedics removing Floyd from the ambulance at a hospital, where he was pronounced dead