George Floyd died of lack of oxygen while being immobilized face down on the pavement with his hands handcuffed behind him, a medical expert testified Thursday at the murder trial of former officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis.
When Floyd was subdued by Chauvin and other officers, he couldn’t breathe well and get enough oxygen, which in turn atrophied his brain and paralyzed his heart, said Dr. Martin Tobin, a pulmonary specialist at Edward Hines Jr. Hospital and from Loyola University School of Medicine in Chicago.
Tobin took the stand as part of prosecutors’ strategy to establish that it was Chauvin’s actions, and not Floyd’s drug use and underlying health conditions, as the defense contends, that killed the 46-year-old black man in last may.
Analyzing a graphic presentation of the three officers who restrained Floyd for more than nine minutes, the doctor said that, according to his calculations, Chauvin’s knee was “on (Floyd’s) neck 90% of the time.”
Tobin said it appeared that Floyd was getting enough oxygen for the first five minutes to keep his brain alive because he was still talking.
The expert explained to jurors that when the airway space narrows, breathing becomes “enormously more difficult”, adding that it would be worse than “breathing through a straw.”
Tobin testified that if the hypopharynx, the lower part of the throat, becomes completely blocked, it only takes a few seconds to reduce the oxygen level until it results “in a seizure or a heart attack.”
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