Originally published 2020-05-28.
The protests over George Floyd's death turned deadly on the night of 27 May 2020, when 43-year-old Calvin Horton Jr. was shot dead outside a pawn shop in Minneapolis during looting. Two days after a police officer knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, demonstrations near the city's Third Precinct had escalated into fires, looting and clashes, with police firing tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. A second man later died in a fire at another pawn shop, and the precinct building itself was burned on 28 May.
This is what happened in those first days, what was known about the officer, how public figures reacted, and how the case ended.
How George Floyd died
On the evening of 25 May 2020, an employee at Cup Foods on 38th Street and Chicago Avenue called police, believing Floyd had paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. Officers handcuffed him and, after a struggle by a squad car, held him face down on the street. Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd's neck while two other officers held his back and legs and a fourth kept bystanders away.
Floyd said repeatedly that he could not breathe and that his neck hurt. Bystanders begged the officers to stop. Chauvin kept his knee in place for more than nine minutes, including several minutes after Floyd went limp and had no pulse. He was pronounced dead in hospital.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
Seventeen-year-old Darnella Frazier filmed the scene on her phone, and her video spread around the world within hours. She later received a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize board. Other footage, including security camera video and a clip filmed from a car behind Floyd's vehicle, showed the arrest beginning and did not show him violently resisting before he was put on the ground.
New video sent to us shows the moment George Floyd was removed from his vehicle and handcuffed on 38th and Chicago.
— Alex Lehnert (@AlexLehnertFox9) May 26, 2020
Video courtesy of Christopher Belfrey pic.twitter.com/MiIIula4sA
The officer's record
All four officers were fired the day after Floyd's death. Reporting soon focused on Chauvin's history. He had joined the Minneapolis police in 2001 and had 18 complaints on his official record, two of which led to formal reprimands.
He had also been involved in earlier shootings. In 2008, responding to a domestic violence call, he shot Ira Latrell Toles twice in the abdomen after forcing his way into a bathroom where Toles had locked himself; police said Toles reached for an officer's gun, while Toles said he was defending himself. Toles survived. Some early reports wrongly described Toles as a woman.
In 2006 Chauvin was one of six officers who fired on Wayne Reyes, who had pulled a shotgun during a traffic stop; a grand jury found that use of force justified.
From protest to unrest
The first protests on 26 May were largely peaceful, with thousands marching from the spot where Floyd died towards the Third Precinct. On the evening of 27 May the mood changed. A racially mixed crowd gathered outside the precinct, windows were smashed, and nearby stores, including a Target, were looted and set on fire.
That night Calvin Horton Jr. was shot about a mile away by the owner of Cadillac Pawn & Jewelry, who believed he was breaking into the shop. Several other people were hit by gunfire, but Horton was the only one killed. Oscar Lee Stewart Jr. was later found dead after a fire at the Max It Pawn store.
On 28 May Governor Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard, and that night protesters overran and burned the Third Precinct after police evacuated it. The eventual Guard deployment was the state's largest since the Second World War. Across Minneapolis and Saint Paul about 1,500 properties were damaged, nearly 100 destroyed outright, with losses estimated at more than $500 million. Police made more than 600 arrests in the first week.
Protests soon spread to hundreds of US cities and to many other countries, and several cities imposed curfews.
Reactions from athletes and politicians
Floyd's death drew condemnation from across sport and public life. Basketball star LeBron James posted an image of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd next to a photo of Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL quarterback who had knelt during the national anthem in 2016 to protest police killings. The pairing made a sharp point: Kaepernick's peaceful kneeling had been widely denounced, while a knee on a man's neck had killed him. James followed up with a picture of Floyd and the caption "We're hunted."
(The Instagram post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
Kaepernick, Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton and many others spoke out. Dallas Cowboys defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence wrote on Twitter that he was done being quiet, asking how people could feel safe when those meant to protect them were killing them.
DONE BEING QUIET AND DONE BEING ANGRY. HOW CAN WE FEEL SAFE WHEN THOSE MEANT TO PROTECT US ARE KILLIN’ US?!!!! WHEN WILL MINORITIES BE FREE TO BE AMERICANS IN AMERICA!?
— DeMarcus Lawrence (@TankLawrence) May 26, 2020
President Donald Trump called Floyd's death "a very sad event" and, according to press reports, asked for the FBI to investigate. Floyd's brother Philonise went further and, as the Guardian reported, called for the officers to face the death penalty.
What happened in court
Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter on 29 May 2020. On 3 June the charge was raised to second-degree murder, and Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao were charged with aiding and abetting.
On 20 April 2021 a jury found Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22.5 years in state prison and, in July 2022, to 21 years on federal civil rights charges, served at the same time. The other three officers received state and federal sentences of between two and a half and about four and three-quarter years. In March 2021 Minneapolis agreed to pay Floyd's family $27 million to settle their civil lawsuit.
The county medical examiner ruled the death a homicide caused by cardiopulmonary arrest during restraint and neck compression, noting that drugs in Floyd's system may have raised the risk. An independent autopsy commissioned by the family found he died of asphyxia. At trial, the jury rejected the defence argument that drugs and heart disease, rather than Chauvin's actions, killed him.
Why Floyd's death became a turning point
Floyd was far from the first Black American to die at the hands of police in circumstances that sparked outrage. Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice were all killed in 2014, and Breonna Taylor had been shot in her Louisville home in March 2020. What made Minneapolis different was the length and clarity of the video, which left little room for competing accounts, and the moment: millions of people were at home during the pandemic, watching.
The protests that followed were among the largest in US history. They led to new police policies in many cities, bans on chokeholds and neck restraints, and a lasting national debate about how police use force. Minneapolis itself was later found by the US Justice Department to have engaged in a pattern of unlawful policing, and the intersection where Floyd died became a memorial known as George Floyd Square.
Video from the Minneapolis protests and the wider wave of demonstrations that followed in late May and June 2020.
Sources: Wikipedia: Murder of George Floyd; Wikipedia: George Floyd protests in Minneapolis–Saint Paul; Wikipedia: Derek Chauvin.
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