JOIN USGeorge Floyd’s girlfriend recounts shared struggle with addiction
On the fourth day of testimony in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former officer charged in Floyd’s death, the prosecution presented a fuller picture of George Floyd the person. In testimony, Courteney Ross, who had been dating Floyd for almost three years, described how he was a caring partner, a devoted father and passionate about exercise.
And like so many Americans, the couple had a shared struggle: opioid addiction.
“Our story, it’s a classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids,” she said. “We both struggled from chronic pain. Mine was in my neck and his was in his back.”
After three days of emotional testimony from bystanders who witnessed Floyd’s death in police custody last May, prosecutors on Thursday nudged the trial forward to one of the central aspects of the case: Floyd’s drug use.
In calling Ross to the stand, prosecutors both sought to humanize Floyd and seize the narrative around his struggle with drugs. By showing he had a high tolerance for opioids, prosecutors hope to cushion the blow of what is expected to be Chauvin’s primary defense — that Floyd died from a drug overdose, not from Chauvin’s knee pressing into his neck for more than nine minutes.
Read: Paramedic says Floyd was 'deceased' when he arrived
Eric J. Nelson, Chauvin’s lawyer, approached his cross-examination of Ross delicately. Ross told Nelson that they relapsed together last spring, and that Floyd was hospitalized for several days in March after she found him doubled over in pain from an overdose. Later that month, she thought they had both managed to quit again, but in the weeks before he died in May, a change in Floyd’s behavior made her think he had again begun using.
Jurors also heard on Thursday from two paramedics who said that Floyd was in a dire state by the time they arrived on the scene on May 25. Derek Smith, one of the paramedics, said he could not find a pulse when he felt Floyd’s neck as police officers remained on top of him.
“In lay terms, I thought he was dead,” Smith testified.