George Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd said the former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin’s legal defense team is “trying to assassinate” his brother’s character.
“He’s fighting for his life, just like I’m fighting for my brother’s life. We have seen the video. We have facts. They are in there trying to assassinate his character. When you don’t have facts, that’s what you have to do,” he told CNN.
Describing the first day of Chauvin’s trial as an “emotional roller coaster,” Floyd said he didn’t know that the former police officer knelt on his brother for nine minutes and 29 seconds.
“The video, every time I watched it, I only just hear eight minutes and 46 seconds. I never try to watch the entire video. It’s not something that you want to watch — your brother tortured and screaming and asking for our mom and saying ‘tell my kids I love them. I can’t breathe.’”
He added:
“To everybody else, it was a case and a cause. To me, it was my brother. Somebody that I grew up with — eating with, sleeping in the same bed with, going fishing with. Just watching him dance with my mother. Those are the things that I think about when I think about my brother. He was a protector. He was someone who we can go to when we were in trouble and in need of anything,” he said Tuesday.
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