Washington.- The doctor Bradford Langenfeld, who certified the death of George Floyd, said on Monday that asphyxia was the most likely cause of his death and not a heart attack, as the defense of former police officer Derek Chauvin, accused of the murder of the African American, tries to demonstrate.
Langenfeld, who works at the Hennepin County Medical Center (Minnesota), was one of the witnesses summoned to testify this Monday in the trial against Chauvin for the death of Floyd.
During his testimony, the doctor explained that he treated the victim for 30 minutes on May 25, during which the doctors tried to revive him.
“There was no obvious or significant trauma to suggest that he suffered something that caused a bleed leading to cardiac arrest,” Langenfeld said.
In that sense, he indicated that the most likely reason for his death was hypoxia, that is, a lack of oxygen in the brain and other organs.
Asked then by prosecution attorney Jerry Blackwell whether his main theory about the cause of Floyd’s death was a lack of oxygen, Langenfeld answered affirmatively: ‘I feel that at the time, based on the information available to me, it is the most probable thing that it happened ».
At this point in his statement Blackwell interrupted him to ask him to clarify whether there was another name for “oxygen deficiency”, to which the witness replied that “asphyxia is a commonly understood term”.
“THAT SHOULD HAVE ENDED”
The Chief of the Minneapolis Police, Medaria Arradondo, also declared this Monday, who criticized the actions of his former agent in a severe way.
“Once Mr. Floyd stopped resisting, and certainly once he was distraught and trying to verbalize it, that should have ended,” said the police chief.
Arradondo also claimed that Chauvin violated department protocols in his immobilization of Floyd.
“To continue applying that level of force to a person who was face down, handcuffed in the back, that is in no way or form normative. It is not part of our training, and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values, ”he added.
Floyd was killed last May when four officers tried to arrest him for using a counterfeit bill to pay at a store. During his arrest, Chauvin pinned him to the ground by pressing his knee against his neck until he stopped breathing.
The former police officer is charged with second degree murder, punishable by up to 40 years in prison; murder in the third degree, with a maximum sentence of 25 years, and murder in the second degree, which carries up to 10 years of deprivation of liberty.
However, as he has no criminal record, he could only be sentenced to a maximum of 12.5 years in prison for the first two charges and 4 years in prison for the third.
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