Thursday began the fourth day of the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd. The fourth day of the trial brought forward some new key witnesses and testimonies, perhaps one of the more important being that from retired Minneapolis police sergeant David Pleoger. On the day of George Floyd’s death, Derek Chauvin called Sgt. Pleoger after kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes, asking him to come out to the scene.
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“I was just going to call and have you come out to our scene here,” Chauvin said to Sgt. Pleoger in a phone call captured on body camera footage. “We just had to hold a guy down. He was going crazy. He wouldn’t … he wouldn’t go in the back of the squad –”
The recording of the call then ends when Cauvin turns off his body cam. When asked what Chauvin said during the rest of the phone call, Sgt. Pleoger recalled that George Floyd allegedly became combative when he refused to go into the back of a squad car, and then Chauvin said that there was a “struggle” which resulted in Floyd having a medical emergency. When Pleoger implored officers on the scene to speak to witnesses, Chauvin told him that they were “hostile.”
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Chauvin did not tell Sgt. Pleoger that he had kneeled on George Floyd’s neck until later that night at the Hennepin County Medical Center. This is the second time that Chauvin’s perspective of the events has been seen during the trial after Wednesday’s body cam footage saw Chauvin saying that George Floyd looked like he was “probably on something.”
[Via]