George Floyd’s death has officially been ruled a homicide after an independent autopsy was performed on Monday, June 1 at the behest of his family. The findings concluded that Floyd’s death was a “homicide caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain,” confirming what most people already knew.
- Floyd died at the scene. After he was arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill, George Floyd was basically choked to death by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly 12 minutes in total, ignoring Floyd’s frantic pleas saying that he couldn’t breathe. As the autopsy found, Floyd died at the scene before he ever had chance of getting medical attention. This was easily determined to be homicide by the former New York City medical examiner who performed the autopsy.
- A few things contributed to George Floyd’s death. The autopsy found that the combination of pressure on Floyd’s back, the position he was held in, as well as the handcuffs on his arms all contributed to his death, particularly because these things prevented his diaphragm from functioning correctly.
- The original autopsy claimed Floyd died of underlying issues. Last Monday, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office released its autopsy findings, claiming that George Floyd died because of “a cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained by law enforcement officer(s),” ABC News reports. In other words, it was completely accidental and couldn’t have been predicted or prevented. Obviously, that was a lie.
- The experts who oversaw the independent autopsy easily determined the truth. The independent autopsy was overseen by Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School’s director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson. Both were in agreement that George Floyd’s death was a homicide. You may remember Baden as he was the same expert who performed Eric Garner’s autopsy.
- George Floyd was in good health before his murder. As Baden said in a news conference, there were no health issues that would have caused Floyd to die during a normal arrest. Not only that, but the video of the incident clearly showed the compression on the back of his neck. “When he said ‘I can’t breathe,’ unfortunately, many police are under impression that if you can talk that means you’re breathing. That is not true,” Baden explained.
- The investigation is still ongoing. Baden said that toxicology reports and other examinations are continuing but that they did not believe the results of those tests would change anything. “We feel those items will not change or alter the cause of death with mechanical asphyxia,” Baden said. This is likely in response to the original report from Hennepin County which claimed that George Floyd had “other significant conditions,” including “arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease, a fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use.”
