The paramedic who assessed George Floyd before former police officer Derek Chauvin removed his knee from his neck has told the court that he did not feel Floyd’s pulse.
Derek Smith and his paramedic partner Seth Bravinder were asked to explain what was going on in the distressing video.
The jury was shown new photos of paramedics loading the handcuffed man into the ambulance and trying to resuscitate him on May 25, 2020.
When asked to described Floyd’s condition, paramedic Smith said: “In lay terms, I thought he was dead.” The jury was then shown a screengrab of him checking for the man’s pulse.
Another video also showed Smith gesturing to Chauvin to lift his knee off Floyd’s neck so they could carry his body on a stretcher.
The paramedic told the court that Floyd’s pupils were ‘large and dilated.’ In photos shown during his testimony, Floyd was seen slumped with blood in his mouth.
The court also heard evidence of Floyd’s struggles with opioid addiction. The defense said that Floyd passed away as a result of an overdose and not of asphyxiation.
When asked what a paramedic would expect to see in the eyes of a person who had suffered an opioid overdose, Bravinder answered: “We look to see if their pupils are really small, constricted, pinpoint.”
When Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson countered and asked what methamphetamine does to the pupils, the paramedic answered: “It dilates them.”
Methamphetamine is one of the substances found in Floyd’s blood.
Smith said that he detected a flicker of electrical activity in Floyd’s heart as they rushed to the Hennepin County Medical Center but the patient remained ‘in his dead state.’
Both Smith and Bravinder testified that they wanted to get the handcuffed man into the ambulance quickly as he was already in cardiac arrest.
“On top of that there was also a crowd of people who were yelling and in my mind we had to get away from that because running a cardiac arrest takes lot of mental power, can be taxing and we want to do that in the optimum environment …to be in a controlled space,” Bravinder added.
When Erin Eldriged, prosecuting, asked if it was important to start resuscitating as soon as a pulse was lost, Bravinder replied: “Yes, as soon as possible. The longer a patient goes without receiving resuscitation the less likely it is that resuscitation will be successful.”
But despite all their efforts to save Floyd, he never regained a pulse.
When cross-examined by Nelson, the paramedic confirmed that he had personally been called out to emergencies involving drug overdoses.
Nelson then asked: “Is that because sometimes when people are treated for an overdose and they come round they become aggressive and violent?” to which Bravinder replied: “Yes.”
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