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(NEW YORK) — Opening statements got underway Monday in the federal trial of three former Minnesota police officers charged in the death of George Floyd with a prosecutor telling the jury the defendants “made the conscious choice over and over again” not to protect the 46-year-old Black man.

Fired Minneapolis police officers J. Alexander Kueng, 28, Thomas Lane, 38, and Tou Thao, 35, are fighting charges stemming from their alleged roles in the deadly confrontation with Floyd who their one-time senior officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murdering.

The trial, expected to last two to four weeks, is being held at the Warren E. Burger Federal Building in St. Paul.

The trial got underway just after 10 a.m. with U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson swearing in the jury before calling on a federal prosecutor to give the first opening statement.

“In your custody, in your care,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Samantha Trepel told the jury, reading from the Minneapolis Police Department’s policy on how officers should treat people once taken to custody. The prosecutor added that it’s “not just a moral responsibility, it’s what the law requires under the U.S. Constitution.”

Trepel said the defendants were all trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, yet took no action to help save Floyd’s life as he claimed at least 25 times that he could not breathe, was rendered unconscious and lost a pulse.

“Here on May 25, 2020, for second after second, minute after minute, these three CPR-trained defendants stood or knelt next to Officer Chauvin as he slowly killed George Floyd right in front of them,” Trepel said.

She added that the officers each made the “conscious choice over and over again” not to act to protect a man they had in handcuffs and pinned to the pavement.

Trepel noted that in one of the videos of the episode, Tao, who was trying to keep a crowd at bay, was standing next to Chauvin but failed to stop the excessive force, rather telling witnesses, “This is why you don’t do drugs, kids.”

The prosecutor said Keung was kneeling on Floyd’s back the whole time and did nothing to stop Chauvin’s excessive use of force, even two minutes after he could not find Floyd’s pulse and after an ambulance crew arrived and could not detect a heartbeat.

Trepel said that despite being rookie cops, Lane and Keung had been extensively trained for 1 1/2 years, both being taught at the police academy many times to turn a subject onto their side when they are having trouble breathing.

“We will ask you to hold these men accountable for choosing to do nothing and watch a man die,” Trepel told the jury

Attorneys for each of the defendants are expected to follow with their own opening statements to the jury.

Following Trepel’s statement, Kueng’s attorney, Thomas Plunkett, made a motion for a mistrial, arguing that some of what Trepel’s told the jury was more argumentative than a preview of the evidence the prosecutors intend to present over the course of the trial.

Magnuson denied the motion.

Thao’s attorney, Robert Paule, acknowledged in his opening statement that Floyd’s death was a tragedy, but added, “a tragedy is not a crime.”

Paule told the jury that he expects the prosecution to lean heavily on the video evidence in the case, including footage taken by witness Darnella Fraizer, the then 17-year-old, who began recording when the officers already had Floyd handcuffed and prone on the ground. Paule told the jury that the video doesn’t tell the whole story and noted that Floyd was struggling and resisting the officers prior to Fraizer and other witnesses filming the encounter.

Paule told the jury that after hearing the evidence, the only verdict justified will be not guilty on all counts.

Keung’s attorney, Tom Plunkett, said Keung and Lane had only completed five shifts on the job by the time they became involved in Floyd’s fatal arrest and deferred to Chauvin, their field training officer with 19 years of law enforcement experience under his belt.

Plunkett said a field training officer “has great control over a young officer’s future in the Minneapolis Police Department.”

He said Chauvin was clearly in charge of the incident even though Lane should have been because he was the senior officer in the first squad car to arrive at the scene.

Lane’s attorney, Earl Gray, called the government’s case against his client a “perversion of justice.”

Gray said Floyd measured 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds and put the officer in a “scary” scenario when he struggled with them.

“He was all muscle,” Gray said of Floyd.

He said Lane “was totally concerned and did everything he could possibly do to help George Floyd.” He said Lane asked Chauvin and Kueng if they should turn the man on his side to help him breathe, but his suggestions were rejected.

“Not deliberatively indifferent about his health at all,” Gray said of Lane’s reactions during the episode.

Gray told the jury that Lane will testify during the trial.

Attorneys for the Floyd family released a statement earlier saying the trial is “another milestone in the long, slow journey to justice for George Floyd and his family.”

“This trial will be another painful experience for the Floyd family, who must once more relive his grueling death in excruciating detail,” the statement from the family’s attorneys said.

The 18-member jury, including six alternates, was impaneled in just one day, chosen on Thursday from a pool of 256 potential jurors. The jury is comprised of 11 women and seven men, none of whom are Black.

All three defendants are charged with using the “color of the law,” or their positions as police officers, to deprive Floyd of his civil rights by allegedly showing deliberate indifference to his medical needs as Chauvin dug his knee in the back of a handcuffed man’s neck for more than 9 minutes, ultimately killing him.

Kueng and Thao both face an additional charge alleging they knew Chauvin was kneeling on Floyd’s neck but did nothing to intervene to stop him. Lane, who was heard on police body camera footage asking if they should roll Floyd on his side to help ease his breathing, does not face that charge.

Kueng, Lane and Thao have pleaded not guilty.

Opening statements in the trial commenced a little over a month after Chauvin, 45, a former Minneapolis police officer, pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s death and the abuse of a 14-year-old boy he bashed in the head with a flashlight in 2017. He admitted in the signed plea agreement with federal prosecutors that he knelt on the back of Floyd’s neck even as Floyd complained he could not breathe, fell unconscious and lost a pulse.

The guilty plea came after Chauvin was convicted in Minnesota state court in April of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison in the state case and is facing an even stiffer sentence in the federal case.

Kueng and Lane were rookies being trained by Chauvin at the time of Floyd’s fatal arrest.

The May 25, 2020, police encounter with Floyd, who was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a convenience store, was recorded on video from start to finish and included multiple angles taken by bystanders with cellphones, police body cameras and surveillance cameras.

The footage showed Chauvin grinding his knee into the back of Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds while Kueng helped keep Floyd down even after he stopped resisting by placing his knee on the man’s back and holding and lifting one of his handcuffed hands. Lane, according to the videos, held down Floyd’s feet.

Thao, according to footage, stood a few feet away, ordering a crowd to stand back despite several witnesses, including an off-duty firefighter, expressing concern for Floyd’s well-being.

Following the federal trial, Lane, Keung and Thao are facing a state trial on charges arising from Floyd’s death of aiding and abetting second-degree murder, and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.

The three defendants have pleaded not guilty to the state charges.

ABC News’ Janel Klein contributed to this report.

 

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(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 866,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

About 63.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Jan 24, 7:45 am
Scale of education lost ‘nearly insurmountable,’ UNICEF warns

More than 635 million students around the world remain affected by full or partial school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), which described the scale of education lost as “nearly insurmountable.”

“In March, we will mark two years of COVID-19-related disruptions to global education. Quite simply, we are looking at a nearly insurmountable scale of loss to children’s schooling,” Robert Jenkins, UNICEF chief of education, said in a statement Monday. “While the disruptions to learning must end, just reopening schools is not enough. Students need intensive support to recover lost education. Schools must also go beyond places of learning to rebuild children’s mental and physical health, social development and nutrition.”

As Monday marks the International Day of Education, UNICEF warned that many schoolchildren, especially the younger and more marginalized, have lost basic numeracy and literacy skills since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. In low- and middle-income countries, learning losses to school closures have left up to 70% of 10-year-olds unable to read or understand a simple text, up from 53% prior to the pandemic, according to UNICEF.

In Ethiopia, primary school children are estimated to have learned between 30% to 40% of the math they would have acquired if it had been a normal school year, UNICEF said.

In South Africa, schoolchildren are between 75% and a full school year behind where they should be. Some 400,000 to 500,000 students reportedly dropped out of school altogether between March 2020 and July 2021, according to UNICEF.

Across Brazil, one in 10 students aged 10 to 15 reported they are not planning to return to classrooms once schools reopen. In several Brazilian states, around three in four children in second grade are off-track in reading, up from one in two children prior to the pandemic, UNICEF said.

Meanwhile, learning losses have also been observed across the United States. In Texas, for example, two-thirds of children in third grade tested below their grade level in math in 2021, compared to half of children in 2019, according to UNICEF.

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(BALTIMORE) — A man who worked on the front lines of preventing gun violence in Baltimore, Maryland, was shot and killed on Wednesday night in a quadruple shooting on E. Monument Street, in the McElderry Park neighborhood.

Baltimore native DaShawn McGrier, 29, worked as a violence interrupter for Safe Streets and is the third member of the organization to be shot and killed in the last year.

“[DaShawn] was passionate about his community, and was working hard to make that community safer for his family, friends and neighbors,” said Meg Ward, Vice President of Strategic Growth and Community Partnerships at Living Classrooms — a nonprofit that operates two of the 10 Safe Streets sites in the city, including McElderry Park. “He was a son, he was a father, he was a partner. He was a brother, he was a devoted and present father to his child.”

According to Ward, McGrier was having a conversation with the other two victims while working at his post on Monument Street when the shooting occurred.

“Apparently, a tow truck came around the corner and they just shot up the block,” Ward said.

BPD identified the other victims as 28-year-old Tyrone Allen and 24-year-old Hassan Smith. A spokesperson told ABC News Friday that “no arrests have been made at this time.”

“We are dedicating every available resource to finding and apprehending the cowardly perpetrators of this act,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said in a statement Wednesday.

When asked if this was a targeted shooting, police said the investigation is ongoing.

There have been more than 300 homicides in Baltimore each year for the past five years, with 338 in 2021 and 335 in 2020, BPD data shows.

Community members and Safe Streets workers gathered on E. Monument Street Saturday afternoon to honor McGrier and other victims of gun violence.

“What choices are we going to make? This is our community,” said Safe Streets violence interrupter Alex Long in a passionate speech at the event. “These shootings gotta stop.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott also attended the event and said that the city is “determined to honor DaShawn’s legacy in the best way we can — by expanding community violence interventions across the city.”

“[Safe Streets Baltimore] is not just an organization, but a calling. DaShawn believed that we could build a better Baltimore. Let’s show him that we can,” Scott tweeted, along with photos of the event.

Ward said Safe Streets organizes shooting response events to “denormalize” gun violence — especially in neighborhoods where shootings are common — by creating an opportunity for the community to come together to honor the victims and send the message that, “This is not OK.” And on Saturday, they honored one of their own.

Violence interrupters also connect individuals with resources such as job placement opportunities and financial support.

Ward said that McGrier had been working as a violence interrupter for a little over a month, but had been a part of the Safe Streets community for a long time. He was a “hard worker,” she said, who was a welding student at the North American Trade School during the day and worked at the Safe Streets McElderry Park site at night to help mediate conflicts that could lead to shootings.

“The work that is being done to stop this from happening is really, really important. And it makes it that much more important when you lose one of your own,” she said.

McGrier’s killing came as the Safe Streets community continues to mourn the deaths of two beloved longtime members who were killed over the past year and who had dedicated their lives to reducing gun violence.

Dante Barksdale, a Safe Streets outreach coordinator, and Kenyell “Benny” Wilson, a Safe Streets violence interrupter, were shot and killed in separate incidents in January and July. Two days before McGrier was killed, the community gathered to honor Barklesdale on the anniversary of his death.

“We were devastated, it was very traumatizing. It’s very difficult to say their names or to think of them, and to not feel that consistent void in our hearts, because they were definitely individuals who impacted the community in such an incredible way,” Rashad Singletary, the associate director of gun violence prevention at MONSE told ABC News last year. “And for them to lose their lives to the same thing that we tried to save thousands of lives from, it was very, very disheartening and tragic.”

How violence interrupter programs work

Safe Streets was launched in Baltimore in 2007 in the McElderry Park neighborhood. It is one of several violence prevention programs in the country that is based on a model that started in Chicago in the mid 1990s.

Violence interrupters also connect high risk individuals with resources that the organization offers, including job placement and financial support that could help alleviate some of the suffering — conditions that lead some to resort to violence.

What the data shows

Recent studies have shown that Safe Streets programs have been effective at reducing gun violence in various neighborhoods.

A 2012 study published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that Safe Streets workers were successful at reducing gun violence in three of four neighborhoods where the initial sites were established, Director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University Daniel Webster previously told ABC News.

Safe Streets workers mediated more than 2,300 conflicts in 2020, according to MONSE, and after gaining more funding from the city, the organization opened its tenth site in 2021.

“Safe Streets workers mediate the very types of conflicts we saw tonight,” Harrison said in a statement Wednesday. “All the Safe Streets workers are to be applauded for their work in reducing gun violence and promoting a message of redemption and peace to the many young people of our city.”

MONSE Director Shantay Jackson said that the mayor’s office will be providing support to the family of the victims and the staff, including grief counseling.

“This is a reminder of the courageous, yet dangerous job our frontline staff does each day when working with those at the highest risk of being a shooter or the victim of a shooting,” she said in a statement.

Ward said that the “tremendous loss” highlights the need for violence-prevention work in Baltimore.

“People are heartbroken,” she said, “and at the same time, [the] feeling or sense is this is the reason to double down.”

ABC News’ Abby Cruz and Kendall Ross contributed to this report.

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