George Floyd secret tapes reveal his last words were ‘I can’t breathe’ – but judge blocks public release
POLICE bodycam footage of George Floyd’s final moments reveal his final words were “I can’t breathe” - but not everyone will be able to see the tapes.
While the videos offer a fuller picture of how four Minneapolis officers handled , Judge Peter Cahill only let members of the media and public watch it in a courthouse.
News organizations were not allowed to publish the body cam videos, and detailed the content based on observation.
Floyd, a Black man, sobbed throughout as the cops took him out of a vehicle and white officer knelt on his neck.
“I can’t breathe”—Floyd’s final words—were not mentioned in a transcript of the body cam footage released last week, according to .
The two videos from body cameras worn by former Minneapolis police officers Thomas Lane and J. Kueng start with them responding to a report of someone using a fake bill at a market.
Just 36 seconds after speaking with the market worker, the officers appear next to the vehicle Floyd was in.
Lane strikes Floyd with a flashlight and then points a gun at him, shouting, “Put your f**king hands upright now!”
Floyd continues to sob and about three minutes into the footage, the officers take Floyd out of the vehicle and handcuff him.
The body cam video viewed by CNN shows Kueng trying to push Floyd into a squad car and Lane trying to pull him in from the other side.
“I can’t breathe,” Floyd yells for the first time.
Floyd falls out of the squad car where Lane stands and two other cops show up, Chauvin and Tou Thao.
Chauvin, Lane and Kueng are shown in the video trying to restrain Floyd and the Black man falls to the spot where the widely seen bystander cell phone video was recorded.
Chauvin places his knee on Floyd’s neck about 11 minutes and 23 seconds into the recording from Lane’s body cam.
The white officer seems to put more pressure on Floyd’s neck with a downward motion using his knee.
About 16 minutes into the body cam video, Floyd utters his last words, “Man, I can’t breathe.”
Paramedics work on Floyd just over nine minutes after Chauvin initiated the knee hold, and Floyd’s motionless body is moved to an ambulance shortly after.
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Lane’s attorney Earl Gray provided the body cam footage last week as part of an effort to dismiss his client’s case.
Gray, Kueng’s attorney Tom Plackett and an attorney for a coalition of media organizations have all pushed for the body cam videos to be released for anyone to view, saying they can provide a more complete picture of the incident.
But as of Wednesday afternoon, the judge had not consented to the footage being widely released or published.