MINNEAPOLIS – In painful testimony at the trial of a police officer accused of killing George Floyd last May, Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, explained how they separately had become addicted to opioids for chronic pain. She choked up about their first meeting in 2017. It was in the lobby of a homeless outreach shelter, where the father of her son was living. “I was pretty upset and started fussing in the corner of the lobby,” she said. That’s when Floyd noticed her and approached. In his “deep southern voice,” Floyd asked her if he could pray with her. “It was so sweet,” she said, holding back tears. Ross described how the two of them became hooked on prescription pain-killers. Ross said that at times they got drugs that were not prescribed to them. Off and on, one or both of them would stop taking drugs, she said. Nonetheless, addiction was an ongoing struggle, she said. Under cross-examination Ross acknowledged that Floyd overdosed and went to the hospital in March 2020. About Floyd calling for his mother in his final moments in police restraint on May 25. Ross said he was close to his mother, who died in 2018. She painted Floyd as an energetic and gentle man, in contrast to the image of a drug-crazed, threatening leviathan that the other side is building toward.
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GEORGE FLOYD MURDER TRIAL
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Ross. She sobbed in telling the story of her sympathy-evoking relationship with George Floyd, including the physical pain that led them into addiction.
A Morries Hall link
Ross said that she and Floyd had gotten drugs from time from a man named Morries Hall. She said that Hall was in the car with Floyd at Cup Foods the evening that Floyd died. Meanwhile, Hall filed a notice to the court that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination in called to testify.