Transcript of officer's body camera shows George Floyd told officers 'I can't breathe' before being restrained
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - The attorney of one of the four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of George Floyd in May is asking the court to dismiss the charges against him.
Thomas Lane, 37, is charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in connection with Floyd’s May 25 death.
Lane’s attorney, Earl Gray, filed a motion Tuesday to dismiss the charges against Lane. He submitted eight documents supporting the motion to dismiss, including the transcript of Lane’s body camera video.
TRANSCRIPT
Lane and another officer, J. Alexander Kueng, who is also charged in Floyd’s death, were initially called to Cup Foods at 38th and Chicago on a report that someone had used a counterfeit $20 bill at the store.
The charges against Lane say he pulled his gun out when he approached the vehicle where Floyd was sitting and pointing it at Floyd’s open window.
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According to the transcript from his body camera video, he asked to see Floyd's hands at least 10 times.
The transcript shows Floyd repeatedly asked the officers not to shoot him, saying he had been shot before.
“I’m sorry, I‘m so sorry. God dang man. Man, l got, I got shot the same way, Mr. Officer, before,” Floyd says.
Lane asks Floyd to step out of the vehicle. As he is doing so, Floyd says to him, “Okay, Mr. Officer, please don‘t shoot me. Please, man.”
Lane: I'm not going to shoot you. Step out and face away.
Floyd: I’ll look at you eye-to-eye man. Please don‘t shoot me, man.
Lane: I'm not shooting you, man.
Floyd: l just lost my mom, man.
Lane asks a witness, Shawanda Renee Hill, why Floyd is acting erratic.
Lane: Why's he getting all squirrelly and not showing us his hands, and just being all weird like that?
Hill: I have no clue, because he's been shot before.
Lane: Well get that, but still when officers say, "Get out of the car." ls he drunk, is he on something?
Hill: No, he got thing going on, I‘m telling you about the police.
Lane: What does that mean?
Hill: He have problems all the time when they come, especially when that man put that gun like that. It's been one.
As the officers are trying to get Floyd into their squad car, he repeatedly tells them he is claustrophobic and asks them to crack a window.
"Y‘all I'm going to die in here! I'm going to die, man!...and I just had COVID-19 man, I don’t want to go back to that,” Floyd says.
Lane tells Floyd he will roll the windows down and turn the air conditioning on.
Floyd tells the officers several times that he cannot breathe and says he wants to lay on the ground. Prior to getting Floyd to the ground, he says he cannot breathe multiple times.
At some point, Derek Chauvin and Tou Thao arrive on the scene.
The officers bring Floyd to the ground, where he continues to say he cannot breathe. He repeatedly cries out for his mother and says, “Tell my kids I love them. I’m dead."
“You’re doing a lot of talking man,” Chauvin tells him.
At one point, Lane asks, “Should we roll him on his side?”
Chauvin replies, “No, he’s staying put where we got him.”
Lane: Okay. just worry about the excited delirium or whatever.
Chauvin: Well that's why we got the ambulance coming.
Lane: Okay, I suppose.
Lane asks again a short time later, “Should we roll him on his side?”
EMS arrives to check on Floyd. Lane asks the paramedics, "you want one of us to ride with?" and he goes into the ambulance to help with CPR.
One of the paramedics asks Lane what was going on. Lane replies that they responded to a forgery report and that Floyd was “just not compliant with getting out of the car.”
“We were trying to get him in the back of the squad, and he was just basically resisting…He wasn't showing us his hands at first. Then we were trying to get him into the squad, he kicked his way out, he was kicking on there. And we came out the other side, and he was fighting us, and we were just basically restrained him until you guys got here,” Lane says.
Floyd was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
Lane, Kueng and Thao are also facing two charges each of aiding and abetting. Chauvin, the officer seen on bystander video kneeling on Floyd's neck as he struggled to breathe, is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.