MINNEAPOLIS – A security guard called on his college wrestling and martial art experience in describing for a jury the choke-hold death of George Floyd. Donald Williams, 33, said the chokehold was lethal. At the scene, on a south Minneapolis street last May, Williams pleaded to police officer Derek Chauvin to let up. In a video played for the jury, Williams became louder and louder and more incessant in warning Chauvin that Floyd’s life was being sapped away snd to stop. To the court he said that Floyd was “speaking in a distressed way,” telling Chauvin that everything hurt and calling for his mother,. Williams said that his mixed martial arts training made it clear to him that Floyd’s breathing signaled that he was near death. “His breathing was getting tremendously heavy,” Williams said. “You could see him struggling, to actually gasp for air.” Williams described Chauvin’s knee positioned on Floyd’s neck as what’s known in martial arts a “blood choke.” Chauvin was shimmying his knee for greater effect, he said.
On witness stand. Williams illustrates the lethal “blood choke.”