Chauvin body-camera footage shown for first time after witnesses speak of guilt, helplessness

Body-camera footage from former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was presented in multiple clips as evidence in his trial on March 31. (Video: The Washington Post)

By Holly Bailey

Hannah Knowles

Timothy Bella

Lateshia Beachum

and

Paulina Villegas

March 31, 2021 at 6:29 p.m. EDT

Prosecutors on Wednesday showed footage from Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s body camera publicly for the first time as the third day of testimony in Chauvin’s murder trial brought more anguish from witnesses, who said they wished they could have saved George Floyd.

The new body-camera footage showed Chauvin briefly putting his black-gloved hands around Floyd’s neck in May as he and another officer tried to force the man inside a vehicle. “We’ve got to control this guy because he is a sizable guy,” Chauvin told an upset witness later.

Earlier Wednesday, a teenage store clerk testified that “this could have been avoided” if he had not taken a counterfeit $20 bill from Floyd. A neighborhood resident started sobbing while re-watching Floyd’s cries for his mother, telling the court: “I feel helpless. I understand him.”

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Charles McMillian, the witness who started crying while video footage played, said he had spoken with Chauvin five days before Floyd’s killing. “I told him, like I tell all, ‘Officer, at the end of the day, you go home to your family safe and let the next person go home to their family safe,’” McMillian said.

There was a brief recess in the trial after a juror stood up and waved her hand in the middle of witness testimony, possibly signaling an illness.

The store clerk, Chris Martin, also told Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson, “I thought that George didn’t really know that it was a fake bill.” The Cup Foods employee said he thought he was doing Floyd “a favor” by accepting the $20.

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