Floyd’s Girlfriend Testifies About Their Relationship, Addiction Struggles

He called his mother “mama,” Ross said -- a name that he also used for her. It’s unclear which of the two women Floyd was calling for in his last moments, if not both. “It was different, the way he said it,” she said. 

Nelson pounced on that in cross-examination, along with the couple’s history of drug use. When they couldn’t buy opioids like Oxycontin or Oxycodone from someone with a prescription, Ross said, they sometimes turned to black-market sources. Morries Hall and Shawanda Hill, who were with Floyd on the day of his death, had sold him drugs in the past. 

Hall filed a motion Wednesday to quash a subpoena for his testimony, notifying the court that he would invoke the Fifth Amendment if asked to testify. Christopher Martin, a Cup Foods employee, testified on Wednesday that Hall tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill in the store before police arrived. 

Nelson questioned Ross extensively on some pills she told FBI and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents she believed Floyd had bought from Hall. Sometime in March, she said, Floyd had brought her pills that were different from the usual opioids she used. “I was up all night,” she said, and kind of “jittery.” 

While Nelson never explicitly drew the connection, toxicology reports have revealed that Floyd had fentanyl, a powerful opiate, and methamphetamine in his system when he died. Nelson also asked about a period in which Floyd was hospitalized early in May for what Ross said she later learned was an overdose. 

Ross left the stand and the court took a break before turning to Seth Bravinder, one of the two paramedics who took Floyd away from 38th Street and Chicago Avenue on May 25.

Bravinder spent his time on the stand walking step by step through a call he and partner Derek Smith received to 38th and Chicago that evening. They’d initially been dispatched on a low-urgency “code 2” call for a bleeding mouth, Bravinder said, but it was upgraded to a full lights-and-sirens “code 3” call about a minute later. 

Upon arrival, he said, he parked the ambulance and waited for Smith to check Floyd’s pulse and pupils. Chauvin was still on Floyd’s neck, he testified.

Smith, affable but blunt, was similarly quizzed on the events. His immediate assessment of the scene was grim, he said. 

“There was elevated tones used. It didn’t feel like a welcoming environment,” he said. Upon checking Floyd’s pulse, he said, he suspected the worst. “In a living person, there should be a pulse there. I did not feel one, I suspected this person to be dead, in lay terms,” he said, a little tersely. 

In a hurry, he pushed an officer aside. “I wanted to get my patient to my rig as quickly as possible…. He was standing in between the patient and the stretcher, he needed to be eliminated from the situation,” Smith said. It was unclear whether the officer he pushed was Chauvin or Lane.

Throughout his testimony, Smith appeared irritated with the police response, at one point saying that Floyd “was a human being, and I was trying to give him a second chance at life.” Asked about whether the police on scene could have done anything to help, he said there was “no reason” police could not have started chest compressions before paramedics arrived. 

The ambulance, he said, traveled to the hospital after firefighters arrived and Smith felt he was able to effectively manage the scene. 

That decision to leave the scene also became a major focus of cross-examination. Nelson has used cross-examination for several of the state’s witnesses to paint an image of an unruly, angry crowd disrupting Chauvin’s work and potentially endangering him. 

Bravinder acknowledged that the crowd was one factor in the paramedics’ decision to drive Floyd a few blocks away, but not the only one. 

“That was a part of it, yes,” he said. Other factors included equipment and backup. 

“All of our equipment at that point was in the truck for resuscitating the patient,” he added. "We also didn’t have Minneapolis Fire there yet, and they work with us on critical patients.” 

Fire Captain Jeremy Norton said that process was slowed down by a lack of information on Floyd’s status. Norton and his crew were called to 38th and Chicago, he said, only to find no patient and no ambulance. He walked into Cup Foods in search of a patient, and an officer inside the store -- likely Kueng -- told him the medics had already left. He then spoke with Genevieve Hansen, an off-duty firefighter who witnessed the event. She was visibly distressed, he said, but at the time he didn’t understand why. 

Hansen testified on Tuesday and Wednesday. After Floyd reached Hennepin County Medical Center and he understood the gravity of the situation, Norton said, he dispatched firefighters to check on her. He also reported the incident to his superiors at the Fire Department. 

After dosing Floyd with epinephrine and sodium bicarbonate, paramedics took him to HCMC, the city’s largest hospital. As far as Bravinder knew, he said, Floyd’s pulse never returned during that time. 

Floyd was eventually pronounced dead at that hospital at 9:25 p.m., 58 minutes after Bravinder and Smith arrived on the scene. 

Bravinder’s testimony concluded with a few questions from each side about paramedics’ handling of potentially dangerous situations and drug overdoses. Nelson alluded to Hennepin EMS’s controversial use of ketamine to subdue some patients, and asked if drug overdose patients sometimes became violent after resuscitation. Bravinder confirmed both. 

Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge asked about what Bravinder’s partner saw in Floyd’s pupils. Opioid overdoses, Bravinder confirmed, usually cause pupils to severely contract. Nelson was quick to point out that methamphetamine often dilates them. Bravinder said he’d never seen Floyd’s pupils, and that while his partner had likely reported their size to him, he didn’t remember what the result was. Smith didn’t testify on the matter. 

Thursday’s final witness was retired police Sergeant David Ploeger, who was on “mid-watch” duty that evening for the Third Precinct. Ploeger was questioned heavily on the MPD’s use-of-force rules, particularly what situations required officers to call a sergeant. Use of the maximal-restraint technique, which the officers attempted to employ with Floyd, and applying force to Floyd’s neck both qualified. 

After a lengthy sidebar and some discussion of admissibility, prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked Ploeger when he thought the use of force should have been stopped. “When he stopped offering up any resistance,” Ploeger replied. 

Ploeger also said Chauvin had not mentioned placing his knee on Floyd’s neck until they were at the hospital and had already heard the news that Floyd had been pronounced dead. 

Nelson’s efforts to portray the crowd as a cause for the officers to hold position on Floyd took a sharp turn into hypotheticals while questioning Ploeger.

“If you were in a gun battle, and someone was shooting at you, and someone had went into cardiac arrest-- would you stop what you were doing to mitigate the threat, or immediately stop to perform CPR?” the defense attorney asked. 

Ploeger responded that he wouldn’t. Schleicher took the opportunity on redirect to clarify that the situation was different. “You’ve reviewed the body-worn cameras, correct?” the prosecutor asked. 

“Yes, I’ve reviewed the body-worn camera footage,” Ploeger responded. 

“You didn’t see a gun battle?”

“No.”

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