The family of George Floyd had an independent autopsy performed on his remains and will announce the results publicly on Monday afternoon. The family’s lawyer, Benjamin Crump, will reveal the findings in a virtual press conference from Minneapolis at 3 p.m. ET. This follows the controversial autopsy from a county medical examiner, which claimed that Floyd did not die from strangulation in police custody.
The Floyd family is working with acclaimed civil rights attorney Crump, as well as police misconduct lawyer Antonio Romanucci. The two lawyers will be joined by the medical experts who performed an independent autopsy on George Floyd, Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Allecia Wilson, for Monday’s press conference. There is no hint yet about what findings they might present, but many expect them to contradict the official story of the Hennepin County Examiner’s Office. According to a report by The Star Tribune, the medical examiner listed Floyd’s official cause of death as a combination of pre-existing conditions and “potential intoxicants in his system.”
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The autopsy added fuel to the fires of outrage around the country this week as Americans turned out to protest police brutality. The Floyd family announced its intention to request an independent autopsy soon afterward, with Crump saying that the county’s medical examination did “not address in detail the effect of the purposeful use of force on Mr. Floyd’s neck and the extent of Mr. Floyd’s suffering at the hands of the police.”
Crump later added that he, Romanucci and the Floyd family were “not surprised, yet [were] tragically disappointed at the preliminary autopsy findings.” Video from the scene shows Floyd being pinned to the ground by three officers with his hands cuffed behind his back. One officer’s knee was pressed to his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Floyd pleaded that he could not breathe at first, and he was unresponsive for the last three minutes of his detainment.
“What we know is clear,” Romanucci told reporters. “George Floyd was alive before his encounter with police, and he was dead after that encounter. We believe there is clear proximity between the excessive use of force and his death.”
The initial autopsy also seemed to contradict the arrest of officer Derek Chauvin, whose knee was on Floyd’s neck. Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter on Friday. He remains in a high-security detention center outside of Minneapolis.
As the protests, demonstrations and clashes with police escalate around the country, some activists on social media are now saying that this movement is not just about Floyd, but about violence against African-Americans and police violence in general.
