The transcripts offer one of the most thorough and dramatic accounts yet of the moments before Mr. Floyd’s death, which set off a national movement about police use of force.
They were filed in state court in Minneapolis on Tuesday as part of an effort by a former officer, Thomas Lane, 37, to have charges that he aided and abetted Mr. Floyd’s murder thrown out by a judge.
George Floyd’s dying moments have played on an endless loop, horrifying the world and prompting a spasm of street protests, but newly released evidence reveals an even more desperate scene than previously known in the moments before an officer pressed his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck.
Mr. Floyd uttered “I can’t breathe” not a handful of times, as previous videotapes showed, but more than 20 times in all. He cried out not just for his dead mother but for his children too. Before his final breaths, Mr. Floyd gasped: “They’ll kill me. They’ll kill me.”
As Mr. Floyd shouted for his life, an officer yelled back at him to “stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.”
The chilling transcripts of Minneapolis police body camera footage, made public on Wednesday, were filed in state court as part of an effort by one of the officers on the scene, Thomas Lane, 37, to have charges that he aided and abetted Mr. Floyd’s murder thrown out by a judge.
NEW YORK TIMES
