George Floyd’s Brooklyn brother calls start of Derek Chauvin’s murder trial ‘surreal,’ says he’ll face fired cop in court
George Floyd’s Brooklyn-based brother called the start of Derek Chauvin’s murder trial “surreal” Monday and said he plans to face his older sibling’s alleged killer in court.
Terrence Floyd, 43, appeared at the Grace Tabernacle Church in Crown Heights and said he’ll travel to Minneapolis later this month to take part in the rotation of relatives allowed to occupy one seat in the courtroom during the pandemic-era proceeding.
Chauvin, 44, is the now-fired Minneapolis Police officer facing second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter charges for Floyd’s May 25 death.
The white officer was caught on video kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for approximately 9 minutes as the handcuffed Black man begged for mercy, turned unresponsive, appeared to stop breathing and fell into cardiac arrest, prosecutors have said.
Terrence Floyd said his family is going through a “trying time” but leaning on each other.
“I’m gonna get through this. I’m gonna help my family get through this,” he said Monday.
“I’m praying and hoping for the outcome that we all want,” he continued, thanking people for their support. But even “if it doesn’t go that way,” he said, “I just know and believe in my heart that there’s gonna be change, regardless, for us as a nation.”
The judge paused the jury selection process for at least a day Monday to give prosecutors a chance to ask the Minnesota Court of Appeal for an emergency stay.
Prosecutors said they believed jury selection could not proceed until a still-pending battle over the possible reinstatement of a third-degree murder charge is fully resolved.
Terrence Floyd spoke Monday alongside the Rev. Kevin McCall, civil rights lawyer Sandford Rubenstein and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, the Black man who died in Staten Island in 2014 after a cop placed him in a banned chokehold during an arrest.
“This case, it touched my heart so personally,” Carr said, drawing the parallel between her son and Floyd both repeatedly telling police that they couldn’t breathe.
“I hope, I pray that this is not a lingering case like my case was,” Carr said, reminding supporters that no criminal charges were filed over her son’s death.
“Don’t think that this is a slam dunk. Once you get into court, they try to assassinate the victim again. First, they murder him. They assassinate him on the street. Then they want to assassinate the character,” she said.
“Now we’re at the pivotal moment where the trial has started,” McCall said. “We are hopeful and prayerful that the system that they tell us to believe in will work for us.”
Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang was on his way to meet with Terrence Floyd after the press conference when he told the Daily News the temporary delay in jury selection appeared “appropriate.”
“You can imagine it’s very difficult, any delay in justice must be for the family,” he said. “I think a lot of folks were disappointed in the charges brought up initially.”
It was just days after Floyd’s death last year that Terrence Floyd visited the exact spot where his older sibling was handcuffed and restrained stomach-down on the street as he gasped for air.
Kneeling himself at the intersection of 38th St. and Chicago Ave. in Minneapolis on June 1, Terrence Floyd quietly sobbed.
“I was praying for his spirit to connect with mine,” he told The News in a phone interview at the time.
“I felt his spirit moving me to tell the people to keep his name ringing,” he said.
