Attorney For Former Officer Involved In Killing George Floyd Blames Witnesses For Not Doing More To Help
An attorney for one of the former Minneapolis police officers charged in the killing of George Floyd is trying to shift the responsibility for his death on those who were witnesses rather than blame his client.
"All these people say why didn't my client intercede... well, if the public is there and they're so in an uproar about this, they didn't intercede either. And my client's down where he can't really see," said attorney Earl Gray to Chris Cuomo on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time.
"He did more than that,” Gray continued. “He went into the ambulance, and he's the one that was doing CPR. He's a man of compassion, he's not a violent person."
Gray’s client, Thomas Lane, is one of the former officers who held down Floyd’s legs while ex-officer Dereck Chauvin, who was Lane’s training officer, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes until he died. His attorney suggests that Lane suggested to Chauvin to roll Floyd on his side multiple times but Chauvin simply ignored him. Lane had been a Minneapolis Police Officer for just four days.
Cuomo rejected the attorney’s argument pointing out that Lane could see that Chauvin was suffocating Floyd, had a duty to intervene and yet did not.
“The idea that civilians should rush into a policing situation in the inner city of Minneapolis against four police officers that have weapons, … don’t you think that’s asking a little much of civilians and a little too little of your client?” Cuomo continued.
Take a look at the exchange here:
Lane was one of the four officers who arrived on the scene who restrained and arrested Floyd. The prosecutor has charged him, along with J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
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