Derek Chauvin — Murder of George Floyd

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis Police Department officer, knelt on his neck for over nine minutes during an arrest. [Floyd's death, captured on bystander video by teenager Darnella Frazier](https://apnews.com/article/pulitzer-prizes-george-floyd-death-darnella-frazier-9038201fdfe64c28e7a928613f02f7ba), sparked the largest civil rights protests in American history and a global reckoning with police brutality and systemic racism in law enforcement.

The incident began when Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill at a convenience store called Cup Foods at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. Employees called 911, and officers Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng responded. After a struggle at Floyd's vehicle, the officers handcuffed Floyd and attempted to place him in the back of a patrol car. Floyd, who was six feet four inches tall, expressed claustrophobia and resisted being placed in the vehicle.

At approximately 8:20 p.m., officers pulled Floyd from the police car and pinned him face-down on the pavement. Chauvin placed his left knee on Floyd's neck and upper back while officers Lane and Kueng restrained his lower body. A fourth officer, Tou Thao, stood nearby controlling the gathering crowd of bystanders who increasingly pleaded with the officers to release their hold on Floyd.

[Floyd repeatedly told officers "I can't breathe" — a phrase he stated more than twenty times over the course of approximately nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726) He called for his mother and said "they're going to kill me." Bystanders begged the officers to check Floyd's pulse and to stop restraining him. Despite these pleas, Chauvin maintained his position. Floyd became unresponsive approximately five minutes into the restraint. Emergency medical services arrived and found Floyd in cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead at Hennepin County Medical Center at 9:25 p.m.

Darnella Frazier's bystander video of the killing was shared widely on social media within hours. The footage showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck while Floyd pleaded for his life. The video's raw documentation of the incident became the catalytic event that transformed an arrest-gone-wrong into a turning point in American civil rights history.

Within days, protests erupted in all fifty states and in countries around the world. The Minneapolis Third Precinct police station was set on fire by protesters. The Minnesota National Guard was deployed. The phrase "I can't breathe" became a rallying cry for the movement, and murals of George Floyd appeared in cities across the globe. The protests represented the largest mass demonstrations in American history, with an estimated fifteen to twenty-six million people participating in the United States alone.

George Perry Floyd Jr. was born on October 14, 1973, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and grew up in the Third Ward neighborhood of Houston, Texas. He was a standout athlete at Jack Yates High School and attended South Florida Community College on a basketball scholarship. He moved to Minneapolis in 2014 seeking a fresh start and worked as a security guard and truck driver. His death at 46 became a defining moment in the national conversation about racial justice, police accountability, and the value of Black lives in America.

All four officers involved in Floyd's death were fired from the Minneapolis Police Department on May 26, 2020, the day after the killing.

Derek Chauvin was charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. His trial began on March 29, 2021, in Hennepin County District Court before Judge Peter Cahill. The prosecution, led by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's team, presented extensive video evidence, medical testimony, and police use-of-force experts who testified that Chauvin's actions violated department policy and training standards.

[On April 20, 2021, the jury found Chauvin guilty on all three counts.](https://www.npr.org/sections/trial-over-killing-of-george-floyd/2021/04/20/987777538/derek-chauvin-found-guilty-of-murder-in-george-floyds-death) [On June 25, 2021, Judge Cahill sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years in prison](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/25/chauvin-sentence/) — a sentence that exceeded the Minnesota sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender, reflecting the court's finding of aggravating factors.

[In December 2021, Chauvin pleaded guilty to federal charges of willfully violating George Floyd's constitutional rights, resulting in death.](https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/15/us/derek-chauvin-federal-plea-george-floyd/index.html) He was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison, to be served concurrently with his state sentence.

The three other officers — Lane, Kueng, and Thao — were convicted in federal court in February 2022 of violating Floyd's civil rights. In state court, Kueng and Lane pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter; Thao was convicted of the same charge after a bench trial.

The City of Minneapolis reached a 27-million-dollar civil settlement with Floyd's family in March 2021, prior to the criminal trial verdict. Chauvin is currently incarcerated in a federal prison. In November 2023, he was stabbed by another inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, and survived.

Floyd's death led to widespread police reform efforts, including the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives but did not pass the Senate.