Minneapolis police have released the transcript of the 911 call that began with a report of someone, later determined to be George Floyd, using a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes – and ended with his death while in police custody.
A clerk at Cup Foods called 911 at 8:01 p.m. and gave the address of the store, 3759 Chicago Ave., according to the Star Tribune.
“Someone comes our store and give us fake bills and we realize it before he left the store, and we ran back outside, they was sitting on their car,” the caller says in the transcript.
“We tell them to give us their phone, put their (inaudible) thing back and everything and he was also drunk and everything and return to give us our cigarettes back and so he can, so he can go home but he doesn’t want to do that, and he’s sitting on his car ’cause he is awfully drunk and he’s not in control of himself.”
The caller then describes the man’s vehicle as a blue van parked on 38th Street.
“So, this guy gave a counterfeit bill, has your cigarettes, and he’s under the influence of something?” the operator says.
“Something like that, yes. He is not acting right,” the caller responds. “He’s like tall and bald, about like 6 … 6 1/2, and she’s not acting right so and she started to go, drive the car.”
The operator then asks whether the person is a man or a woman.
“It is a man,” the caller replies, adding that he is black.
“All right, I’ve got help on the way. If that vehicle or that person leaves before we get there, just give us a call back, otherwise we’ll have squads out there shortly, OK?” the operator says.
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“No problem,” the caller says.
Floyd was later detained and handcuffed before Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, pressed his knee into the back of the 46-year-old’s neck.
Floyd can be heard on video telling cops at least a dozen times that he couldn’t breathe and asking Chauvin to take his knee off his neck.
Medical personnel arrived and took Floyd to a hospital. He was unresponsive and lacked a pulse when he arrived.
The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office has said Floyd was declared dead at 9:25 p.m. Monday, but that the cause and manner of his death remain undetermined “pending further testing and investigation.”
Chauvin and three other officers involved in the case have been fired.
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