(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — A federal jury has convicted all three former Minneapolis police officers on all charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene or provide medical aid as their senior officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the back of the handcuffed Black man’s neck for more than nine minutes.
The all-white U.S. District Court panel of eight women and four men announced its decision Thursday afternoon after roughly 13 hours of deliberations over two days.
Former Minneapolis police officers Thomas Lane, 38, J. Alexander Kueng, 28, and Tou Thao, 35, are all convicted of using the “color of the law,” or their positions as police officers, to deprive Floyd of his civil rights by willfully being indifferent to his serious medical needs.
Thao and Kueng were also convicted of violating Floyd’s right to be free of unreasonable seizure by willfully failing to intervene to prevent Chauvin from applying bodily injury to Floyd.
They had all pleaded not guilty. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Kueng and Lane were rookie police officers under the tutelage of Chauvin, who was their field training officer.
During the trial, which began on Jan. 24 with opening statements, the three defendants took the witness stand and each attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department.
“I would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out,” Thao testified. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd and Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice.”
In her closing argument, U.S. Assistant Attorney Manda Sertich told the jury that Chauvin barely spoke to Lane, Kueng and Thao during the incident and certainly wasn’t “ordering them around.”
“No one did a thing to help,” Sertich told the jury.
Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
Chauvin later pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s death and the physical abuse of a handcuffed 14-year-old boy in 2017.
The legal battles of Lane, Kueng and Thao aren’t over. They face a joint state trial in June on charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter for their alleged roles in Floyd’s May 25, 2020, death.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(SAN ANTONIO, Texas) — The reward for Lina Sardar Khil, the girl who went missing in San Antonio, Texas, last December has increased to $250,000 as police ask the public for any information regarding Lina’s whereabouts.
Lina turned 4 on Feb. 20.
On Lina’s birthday, the Islamic Center of San Antonio announced that it increased a $120,000 reward for any information on Lina to $200,000. Meanwhile, Crime Stoppers of San Antonio has offered $50,000 for information resulting in the arrest or indictment of a suspect accused of involvement in Lina’s disappearance, bringing the latest total to $250,000.
Pamela Allen, who is representing the Khil family, told ABC News that Lina’s family had held out hope that she would be found to celebrate her fourth birthday at home.
“Her light is missing from her family and community. Our continuous prayer is that she will be back in the arms of those that love her,” Allen said.
Allen is the CEO of Eagles Flight Advocacy and Outreach, one of the local organizations and nonprofits that has been assisting in the search for Lina.
San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus tweeted on Saturday that there has been “no pause” in the efforts to find Lina.
“SAPD continues to work with the FBI to find Lina Sardar Khil who went missing on Dec 20. The investigation is on-going. Pls report any info no matter how insignificant you may think it is,” he wrote, urging the public to call SAPD Missing Persons Section on 210-207-7660.
San Antonio Police told ABC News on Friday that Lina’s disappearance is still a “missing person investigation.”
Asked if there are any updates on Tuesday, police did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Lina was last seen on Dec. 20, 2021 at a park on the 9400 block of Fredericksburg Road in San Antonio between 4:30 p.m. and 5:10 p.m., according to police. The park is near the family’s home at the Villa Del Cabo apartment complex.
Lina’s family is part of an Afghan refugee community in San Antonio. They arrived in the United States in 2019 and speak Pashto.
Lina’s mother, Zarmeena Sardar Khil, is pregnant with her second child. She spoke with FOX 29 in San Antonio through a translator earlier this month.
“We all have the same pain, it doesn’t matter that I am from Afghanistan, I have a different culture, different religion. What we have in common is the pain of motherhood as a human, is the same as all people,” she said.
Lina has brown eyes and straight, brown hair, and was last seen wearing a black jacket, red dress and black shoes, according to police.
Last month, Allen’s organization shared a newly surfaced photo taken by a family member of Lina the day she disappeared in hopes that details about Lina’s jewelry could assist the public in identifying her.
In the photo, which was obtained by ABC News, Lina appears to be wearing blue bangle bracelets on one wrist and gold-toned bangles on the other. She is also wearing small gold earrings and an article around her neck that Allen said is known as the Taweez, which is etched with verses from the Quran and is usually worn for protection.
Police are urging anyone with information regarding Lina or her whereabouts to come forward and contact the missing persons unit in San Antonio at 210-207-7660.
(NEW YORK) — After more than 30 months in detention centers, Kelvin Silva was deported last week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Dominican Republic. His mother, children and siblings continue to live in the U.S.
Silva, 45, legally moved to the United States when he was 11. His father was residing in the U.S. as a naturalized citizen, and Silva became a lawful, permanent resident. He had a Social Security card and paid taxes — until an immigration judge revoked his status.
“My belief was that I was a citizen through my father,” Silva previously told ABC News.
But that was not the case. Silva, whose parents were not married, never became a U.S. citizen. At the time he immigrated, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1940 was still the law. It barred children like Silva, whose parents were never officially married, from gaining citizenship status through their fathers.
That law was repealed by Congress in 2000, but the new legislation was not applied retroactively to people over the age of 18, which Silva was at the time.
“There’s this group of people that we maintain are unfairly being punished under the old rule,” Peter Isbister, one of Silva’s lawyers and a senior lead attorney with the Southeast Freedom Initiation at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News.
After his father died when he was a teenager, Silva said he became involved in illegal activities. He was convicted in 2013 for possession with intent to distribute marijuana and cocaine and sentenced to 127 months in federal prison. He earned his GED behind bars and completed a drug abuse program.
But two days before he was tentatively supposed to be released from the custody, ICE began his removal proceedings. That was on July 16, 2019. Since then, Silva remained in ICE custody as he continued to fight to earn his citizenship retroactively. Up until last week.
Silva, whose deportation proceedings began under former President Donald Trump, thought the Biden administration would be his “miracle.”
Just a few months after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, ICE issued an administrative stay in his case at the direction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Silva remained in the U.S.
But there were several times Silva thought he would be deported. He was “toyed with” multiple times, according to Isbister. On several occasions, he was put on a bus or a plane, expecting to be deported, only to be brought back to a detention center, his attorney said.
“He was shackled the whole time,” Isbister said of these moments.
But after more than 30 months in ICE custody, Silva’s hope vanished. He was deported on Feb. 15.
Silva, who has not been to the Dominican Republic since he was 11, has no immediate family members in the country, his family says.
ICE has previously told ABC News that Silva entered the U.S. legally but violated the terms of his admission with multiple drug convictions.
The agency said Silva is “an aggravated felon who falls within the current priorities for civil immigration enforcement arrest and removal set forth by the current administration.”
People who “pose a threat to public safety” are prioritized for deportation, an ICE spokesperson said.
According to Isbister, Silva, his family, and his attorneys are all disappointed in the Biden Administration, which had the discretion to keep him in custody as his case continued to be litigated.
A spokesperson for ICE did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on Wednesday.
“The divergence between the Biden administration’s rhetoric on racial justice and racial equity, and the positions that they took when they had a choice in this case – that’s what’s upsetting,” Isbister told ABC News.
“To have him removed in Black History Month, where with one hand the Biden administration is rightfully elevating the first black woman to the highest court in the land… and with the other hand, really not lifting a finger in the face of the Guyer rule and Kelvin’s removal,” Isbister said, referencing the 1940 law that deprived Silva of citizenship.
“When push comes to shove, the immigrant community comes out on the bottom,” Isbister said.
Despite his deportation, Silva’s attorney says he will continue to fight to be recognized as a U.S. citizen as his case is fought in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
(NEW YORK) — New York City will pilot a program to install platform barriers at three subway stations, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials announced Wednesday, a month after a woman died when a stranger pushed her in front of an oncoming train.
The doors, which will create a barrier between the platform and track to prevent people from falling onto the tracks, will be installed at the Times Square station along the 7 line, the Third Avenue station on the L and the Sutphin Boulevard-JFK station stop on the E, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said on NY1’s “Mornings On 1” Wednesday.
“It’s going to take a while and we’re going to have to put the money together, which is a little complicated,” Lieber told NY1. “But our goal is to try out these technologies at different places in the system, including three stations, trying out platform doors.”
The pilot program is expected to cost more than $100 million, with the doors likely to be installed at the three locations in 2024, the MTA said. The project is scheduled to be discussed at Thursday’s MTA board meeting.
The announcement comes amid safety concerns in the nation’s largest public transit system. On Jan. 15, Michelle Go, 40, died after she was shoved in front of an oncoming train on the N/Q/R/W line inside the Times Square-42nd Street subway station in what police said was an unprovoked attack.
Following Go’s death, several city officials, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, called on the MTA to install the platform barriers, which are used in transit systems in cities including Paris, London and Hong Kong, as well as along the John F. Kennedy International Airport AirTrain.
Previously, the MTA had said installing platform barriers would be prohibitively expensive and complicated due to the age of the subway system. Last month, the agency released a 3,000-page report from 2020 that found that most of the city’s 472 stations can’t accommodate the protective barriers and that it would cost about $7 billion to install them at the 128 stations that could.
In recent weeks, though, Lieber said the MTA was revisiting the issue. On Wednesday, he said the MTA identified the three stations in the pilot as locations “where the engineering does work.”
Levine called the pilot program a “huge win for safety & efficiency.”
“Truly a milestone in the history of NYC’s subways. Congrats to all who fought for this,” he said on Twitter.
From January 2021 to July 2021, 37 people died after getting struck by a train, according to the MTA.
In 2021, 30 people were pushed onto the tracks, according to the New York Police Department’s public information office. So far this year, as of Jan. 23, five people have been pushed onto the tracks, the NYPD said. A further breakdown of injuries or fatalities was not available.
Among other safety measures, the MTA is looking at piloting new technologies, including thermal sensors and lasers, that would detect when someone has fallen onto the tracks, Lieber said.
The city also recently launched a subway safety plan in response to a spike in crime that involves sending more police, mental health clinicians and social service outreach workers into the subways.
(CHICAGO) — The family of Irene Chavez – a woman who died in Chicago police custody last December after an apparent suicide – filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and several police officers.
“What we know is Irene Chavez died in the care and custody of the Chicago police. The officers knew Irene had mental health challenges,” Andrew Stroth, the family’s attorney, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Stroth referenced a video of Chavez released last week by the Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, where Chavez is seen arguing with arresting officers and telling them that she is a military veteran who suffers from PTSD.
Those details are also documented in a police incident report released by COPA.
“CPD officers ignored this information and failed to modify standard arrest procedures to accommodate Irene’s mental health needs,” the lawsuit, which was obtained by ABC News, alleges.
“Not only did CPD officers refuse to accommodate Irene’s disability during the arrest, but they intentionally escalated the situation by mocking Irene and her friend, and using foul, aggressive language,” the lawsuit says.
The Chicago Police Department told ABC News that it does not comment on pending litigation and has referred all questions about the case to COPA.
The City of Chicago’s Law Department did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment but told the ABC station in Chicago, WLS, on Tuesday that “The City has not yet been served with a complaint and will have no further comment as the matter is now in litigation.”
The documents and videos related to the death of Chavez were released as part of an investigation by the civilian oversight agency looking into Chavez’s death.
Body camera video released by COPA shows Chavez arguing while being arrested hours before her death.
According to police, the 33-year-old woman died after an “attempted suicide” on Dec. 18, 2021, at the 3rd District Police Station. The official cause and manner of death are pending autopsy results, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office told ABC News.
Police said Chavez was taken into custody after her involvement in a bar fight at the Jeffery Pub Tavern and was belligerent during processing.
Chavez could be heard by police shouting in the holding cell, the report by COPA said. After about five minutes of silence, an officer went to check on her well-being by looking through the window, the report said. That’s when Chavez was found with her shirt wrapped around her neck, tied to a bench and had a “faint pulse,” according to the report.
Video released by COPA shows officers performing CPR before Chavez was transported to the University of Chicago Hospital. According to COPA, Chavez was in “critical condition” at the time and was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Iris Chavez, Irene’s sister, accused police of neglect and said officers should have recognized that her sister was struggling with mental health.
“[I’m] Looking at the video and saying to myself, why aren’t they doing this instead? Why didn’t they do this? Or why is he talking to her like that?” Iris Chavez said.
According to the lawsuit, Irene Chavez was a “queer Afro-Latina” woman from Chicago and was a “decorated military veteran” who served in combat zones.
“After her honorable discharge from the military, Irene developed serious post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) and struggled with alcohol dependency,” the lawsuit says.
According to the lawsuit, Chavez was “in the midst of a mental health crisis” when she was arrested and had relapsed to drinking that day after being sober for a month.
“Both Irene and her friend repeatedly told CPD officers that Irene was a veteran, that she had PTSD, and that she needed hospitalization,” the lawsuit says.
Irene Chavez is one of two women to die in Chicago police custody within less than two months.
COPA is also investigating the death of London Marquez, 31, who died on Jan. 27. According to Marquez’s family, she was pregnant at the time of her death.
Chicago police declined to comment on that case and referred questions regarding both cases to COPA.
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Wednesday marked the start of the trial for the sole Louisville, Kentucky, police officer charged in connection to the “no-knock” search warrant raid that killed Breonna Taylor.
Brett Hankison — who is expected to testify — is charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors.
Prosecutors say he fired shots that endangered three people who were inside a neighboring apartment: Cody Etherton, his pregnant partner Chelsey Napper and their 5-year-old son.
Hankison was fired from the Louisville Police Department after the March 2020 shooting and is the only officer charged in connection with the incident. No officers have been charged with shooting Taylor.
The deadly shooting took place shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black medical worker, was asleep at home with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker.
Officers arrived and executed a “no-knock” search warrant as part of an investigation into a suspected drug operation, allegedly linked to Taylor’s ex-boyfriend.
Walker, who claims he thought the officers were intruders, fired one shot from his handgun, striking an officer in the leg. In response, police opened fire, and Taylor was shot multiple times. No drugs were found in Taylor’s apartment.
Etherton, the first witness, testified that the gunshots were “inches away from hitting me.”
“Literally, like, one or two more inches and I would have been shot,” he said. “I think about it all the time … I would never even got to meet my son,” he added, referring to his son Bryson.
On cross-examination, Mathews asked Etherton if the situation was chaotic.
“Yeah, the whole thing was chaotic,” Etherton said. “From the time that I got woke up to a loud boom, gunfire coming through my wall and nearly killing me, could have struck my girlfriend. It was chaos.”
Matthews also called attention to the lawsuit that Etherson filed against Hankison and the city of Louisville.
Second on the stand was Louisville Police Sgt. Kyle Meany, who was investigating drug trafficking and looking into Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. Meany was not involved in serving the search warrant.
Meany said a number of search warrants were obtained for different addresses, including Taylor’s. The affidavit attached to the search warrant for Taylor’s apartment was designated as a “no-knock warrant” request, he said, adding that the physical search warrant related to the affidavit was signed by the judge.
Meany said police conducted surveillance of the apartment prior to obtaining the warrant and had photos of Taylor’s ex-boyfriend at her apartment.
On March 12, 2020, police held a briefing for executing the search warrant, he said. Meany confirmed there was a white board with various addresses that were subjects of the search warrants, including Taylor’s address. Above the address, the words “knock and announce” were written, he said.
In opening statements Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley said Hankison fired five bullets into Taylor’s apartment, three of which reached Etherton’s apartment.
Whaley said when officers breached Taylor’s apartment, the officer who fatally shot Taylor moved up to cover the officer with the battering ram, putting himself in the line of fire. Hankison was supposed to be in this role but was telling a person who was leaving a neighboring apartment to go back inside, Whaley said.
Whaley said Hankison had been engaging with that person when shots rang out. She said Hankison fired perpendicular to where the shot came from inside of Taylor’s apartment.
The prosecutor said Etherton jumped up when he heard the ram at Taylor’s apartment and walked toward his front door to see what was going on.
“A bullet whizzed close to his head that he heard, and then saw debris, drywall dust, where that bullet had come through,” Whaley said.
Whaley also said that Hankison gave a statement to investigators claiming he saw a shooter with an AR-15-style rifle in a combat position. No AR-15-style rifle was recovered from Taylor’s apartment, Whaley said.
Hankison’s defense attorney, Stew Matthews, said in his opening statement that he didn’t plan to dispute the evidence presented by the prosecution, but the “issue is what was the reasoning behind his [Hankison] firing the shots.”
Matthews focused on the chaos of the situation and said that Hankison will testify.
Matthews said the prosecution doesn’t know whether or not Hankison could see what was going on into the doorway and that it was “not accurate” to say that he couldn’t see into the hallway when the door was breached.
Matthews said that Hankison saw the muzzle flash from the gun that was fired at officers and that “his perception of it was that it was an AR-15 rifle.”
Matthews said that when Hankison fired his gun, he was “attempting to defend and save the lives of his brother officers.” He said that under the operating procedures of the police department, officers are obligated to defend other officers and citizens, and “that’s exactly what Brett Hankison was doing in this situation.”
“His actions were reasonable and justified given the chaotic situation he was in,” Matthews said.
Hankison has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.
Two other officers involved were also fired from the police department: the officer who fired the shot that killed Taylor per a ballistics analysis and the officer who prepared the search warrant.
ABC News’ Kendall Ross and Kiara Alfonseca contributed to this report.
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — Wednesday marked the start of the trial for the sole Louisville, Kentucky, police officer charged in connection to the “no-knock” search warrant raid that killed Breonna Taylor.
Brett Hankison is charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors. He allegedly fired shots that endangered three people who were inside an apartment directly behind Taylor’s. He will testify at the trial.
Hankison was fired from the Louisville Police Department after the March 2020 shooting and is the only officer charged in connection with the incident. No officers have been charged with shooting Taylor.
The deadly shooting took place shortly after midnight on March 13, 2020. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black medical worker, was asleep at home with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker.
Officers arrived and executed a “no-knock” search warrant as part of an investigation into a suspected drug operation, allegedly linked to Taylor’s ex-boyfriend.
Walker, who claims he thought the officers were intruders, fired one shot from his handgun, striking an officer in the leg. In response, police opened fire, and Taylor was shot multiple times. No drugs were found in Taylor’s apartment.
In opening statements Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley explained that this case isn’t about the Louisville Metro Police Department the search warrant, but about Taylor’s neighbors: Cody Etherton, his wife Chelsey Napper and their 5-year-old son. Whaley said that Hankison fired five bullets into Taylor’s apartment, three of which reached Etherton’s apartment.
Whaley said when officers breached Taylor’s apartment, the officer who fatally shot Taylor moved up to cover the officer with the battering ram, putting himself in the line of fire. Hankison was supposed to be in this role but was telling a person who was leaving a neighboring apartment to go back inside, Whaley said.
Whaley said Hankison had been engaging with that person when shots rang out. She said Hankison fired perpendicular to where the shot came from inside of Taylor’s apartment.
The prosecutor said Etherton jumped up when he heard the ram at Taylor’s apartment and walked toward his front door to see what was going on.
“A bullet whizzed close to his head that he heard, and then saw debris, drywall dust, where that bullet had come through,” Whaley said.
He crawled back to his bedroom and then went back to the front bedroom to retrieve his 5-year-old son, she said.
Whaley also said that Hankison gave a statement to investigators claiming he saw a shooter with an AR-15-style rifle in a combat position. No AR-15-style rifle was recovered from Taylor’s apartment, Whaley said.
Hankison’s defense attorney, Stew Matthews, said in his opening statement that he didn’t plan to dispute the evidence presented by the prosecution, but the “issue is what was the reasoning behind his [Hankison] firing the shots.”
Matthews focused on the chaos of the situation and said that Hankison will testify.
Matthews said the prosecution doesn’t know whether or not Hankison could see what was going on into the doorway and that it was “not accurate” to say that he couldn’t see into the hallway when the door was breached.
Matthews said that Hankison saw the muzzle flash from the gun that was fired at officers and that “his perception of it was that it was an AR-15 rifle.”
Matthews said that when Hankison fired his gun, he was “attempting to defend and save the lives of his brother officers.” He said that under the operating procedures of the police department, officers are obligated to defend other officers and citizens, and “that’s exactly what Brett Hankison was doing in this situation.”
“His actions were reasonable and justified given the chaotic situation he was in,” Matthews said.
Hankison has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.
Two other officers involved were also fired from the police department: the officer who fired the shot that killed Taylor per a ballistics analysis and the officer who prepared the search warrant.
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca contributed to this report.
(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — A federal jury began deliberating Wednesday morning the fates of three former Minneapolis police officers accused of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by not providing medical aid during his fatal arrest and failing to stop their senior officer’s excessive use of force.
The U.S. District Court jury in St. Paul, Minnesota, received final instructions from Judge Paul Magnuson before the panel started weighing the evidence against Thomas Lane, 38, J. Alexander Kueng, 28, and Tou Thao, 35.
Jurors heard closing arguments on Tuesday from prosecutors and defense attorneys, but were sent home before being handed the case due to a snow emergency declared in St. Paul.
In her closing argument, U.S. Assistant Attorney Manda Sertich asked the jury to convict all three defendants, alleging they ignored their duty to intervene as they watched Derek Chauvin “commit a violent crime” by kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed Floyd for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, rendering him unconscious and without a detectable pulse.
“No one did a thing to help,” Sertich told the jury.
Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison. He later pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s 2020 death and the physical abuse of a handcuffed 14-year-old boy in 2017.
“A human being, someone’s son, father, friend, significant other, George Perry Floyd Jr. died a slow and torturous death … underneath their knees, handcuffed, unarmed, not resisting in broad daylight on a public street,” Sertich said.
Defendants failed to follow ‘plain, old common sense’
Sertich cited the inactions of all three men, starting with Thao, who testified during the trial that he never touched Floyd and was focused on “crowd control” during the Memorial Day 2020 episode. But Sertich said Thao refused to stop Chauvin’s brutality despite witnesses, including an off-duty firefighter, yelling at him to check on Floyd’s well-being.
She said Kueng and Lane, both rookie cops at the time of Floyd’s death, and Thao failed to follow “plain, old common sense.”
“Chauvin’s use of force was obvious and unreasonable to everyone, including bystanders which included juveniles,” Sertich said.
She added that Thao appeared more concerned with arguing and belittling “people trying to make him do what the law — not to mention human decency and common sense — required him to do.”
Turning her attention to Kueng, Sertich said that even as Floyd begged for his life and repeatedly complained he could not breathe, Kueng pressed the handcuffed man’s wrists into his back and laughed when Chauvin told Floyd that talking uses a lot of oxygen.
While Lane questioned Chauvin about whether they should put Floyd on his side to help ease his breathing and went with Floyd in the ambulance to assist paramedics, Sertich said he “did nothing to give George Floyd the medical aid he knew Mr. Floyd so desperately needed.”
All three defendants testified during the trial and each attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department.
“I would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out,” Thao testified. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd and Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice.”
Sertich told the jury that Chauvin barely spoke to Lane, Kueng and Thao during the incident and certainly wasn’t “ordering them around.”
‘A tragedy is not a crime’
Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule, acknowledged in his closing argument that Floyd’s death was a tragedy.
“However, tragedy is not a crime,” Paule said.
Paule argued that the actions of all three officers showed they did not willfully neglect to help Floyd. Paule said Thao was the officer who radioed for an ambulance to step up its dispatch to the scene and suggested using a hobble device to restrain Floyd.
He also said Thao believed that Floyd was suffering from excited delirium, a syndrome in which a subject displays wild agitation and violent behavior, and the best thing to do was hold him down until paramedics arrived.
“They didn’t do that for a bad purpose,” Paule said. “They did that to get medical people there quickly.”
He asked the jury to review videos of the incident presented at the trial, noting, “Three officers are not able to control a person in handcuffs.”
Kueng’s attorney, Thomas Plunkett, said his client’s inadequate training by the Minneapolis Police Department, lack of experience and his “perceived subordinate role to Mr. Chauvin” combined for a perfect storm that cost Floyd his life and disproves the government’s allegations that Kueng willfully deprived Floyd of medical aid and failed to stop Chauvin.
Plunkett said Kueng was “under the influence” of Chauvin, his training officer.
“He respected this person. He looked up to this person. He relied on this person’s experience,” Plunkett said.
He added, “We often hear about the mob mentality. Courts are this country’s protection against the mob and courts depend vitally on you as jurors.”
Lane’s attorney, Earl Gray, wrapped up the closing arguments by accusing the government of indicting an “innocent man.”
“In other words, you can do an innocent act and you can end up in a courtroom like this because that’s what happened to Thomas Lane,” Gray told the jury.
Gray left the jury to ponder the question, “Why did the government indict them?”
“We all know why,” Gray said. “Politics, ladies and gentlemen.”
ABC News’ Whitney Lloyd contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — One winter storm has wreaked havoc on Midwest roadways, and another is gearing up to bring a dangerous wave of ice and snow to the Northeast.
The first storm slammed the Midwest Tuesday, dropping 10 to 30 inches of snow in some areas.
The Minnesota State Patrol reported 373 crashes in the last 24 hours, injuring 34 people.
The second storm is forecast to bring major ice accumulation this week from Texas to New York state.
On Wednesday the storm will create horrendous conditions on roads in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. A winter storm warning has been issued for Dallas where ice will be the biggest threat.
The storm then moves north, bringing rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow to the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
On Thursday morning an icy mix will bring sleet, snow and freezing rain to the Mid-Atlantic and Washington, D.C., area.
Thursday night, a more significant wave of ice and snow will arrive to the Interstate 95 corridor from D.C. to Philadelphia and into northern New Jersey.
Freezing rain and sleet will fall Thursday night into Friday morning from Philadelphia to New York City to New York’s Hudson Valley.
Friday morning’s rush hour may be very dangerous in New Jersey, New York City and up to Boston.
The storm will start to move out Friday afternoon with lingering snow most of the afternoon in New England.
Heavy snow is expected from central New York into Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Some areas could see up to 1 foot of snow, especially from Albany, New York, to Boston.
Northern Pennsylvania, the lower Hudson Valley, Connecticut and northern New Jersey could get 4 to 8 inches of snow.
Ice, sleet and freezing rain will be the biggest threat for Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey and New York City.
(ATLANTA) — Ahmaud Arbery Day has been officially recognized in Georgia on the second anniversary of his death, just one day after his killers were found guilty on all counts in the federal hate crime case surrounding Arbery’s death.
The Georgia General Assembly passed a resolution on Feb. 2 to permanently declare Feb. 23 as Ahmaud Arbery Day. Several events have been planned throughout the city by friends, family and local leaders to honor his memory.
The Ahmaud Arbery Foundation, a mental wellness organization focused on Black men that was founded by Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, will hold a private event at the National Center of Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, at 10:30 a.m. where the organization will announce plans to foster “positivity” in light of the tragic killing.
In the Satilla Shores neighborhood of Brunswick, Georgia, where Arbery was killed, a ceremony is planned near the site of his death at 1 p.m., where religious leaders and family will honor his memory and release doves.
A candlelight march is also planned for later that afternoon at 5 p.m. at the Brunswick Ahmaud Arbery mural.
A prayer vigil will be held in Marietta by the Cobb County’s District Attorney’s office at 2 p.m. on Marietta Square.
The memorials follow celebrations of justice outside of the federal courthouse in Brunswick, after the guilty hate crime verdict was read against Arbery’s three killers.
“We got justice for Ahmaud in the federal and the state,” Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery, said following the jury’s announcement.
Gregory McMichael, his son, Travis McMichael, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan were guilty of being motivated by racial hate, interfering with Arbery’s civil rights and attempted kidnapping in Arbery’s death.
Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was chased down and shot to death by the three men while he was out for a Sunday jog on Feb. 23, 2020, in Brunswick.. All three men have also been convicted in connection with his murder.
Travis McMichael, who delivered the fatal shot, and Gregory McMichael were sentenced to life without possible parole. Bryan, 53, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.
ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
