Witness in Floyd Trial Grows Emotional – ‘You Could See His Eyes Slowly Rolling Back’

‘I believe I witnessed a murder.’ That was the testimony of Donald Williams II, a bystander who observed the death of George Floyd. He said he watched Floyd “slowly fade away … like a fish in a bag.”

Williams, appearing for the second consecutive day in the trial of former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, reached for tissues when a prosecutor played an audio recording of the 911 call he made following Floyd’s death (watch above).

On the recording, Williams says Floyd  “wasn’t resisting arrest or nothing. He was in handcuffs.” He added that a police officer later identified as Chauvin “is trying to kill this citizen…He had his knee on the dude’s neck the whole time.”

On cross-examination, a defense attorney Eric Nelson tried to paint Williams as an angry man who contributed to a tense atmosphere that led to Floyd’s death. Nelson pointed out that Williams can be heard calling Chauvin “a bum,” thirteen times on a video of the fatal incident.

But Williams dismissed the idea that he was overly emotional, saying “I stayed in my body.” He conceded that he could be heard yelling invectives at police, but pointed out that he was desperate.

“You could see that [Floyd] was going through tremendous pain and you could see it in his face, from the grunting,” Williams said Tuesday. “You could see his eyes slowly rolling back in his head, and him having his mouth open — wide open.”

Williams told jurors that he tried to talk to the officers detaining Floyd, but he couldn’t establish a “connection.”

Nelson, the defense attorney, attempted to discredit Williams’ understanding of police training. Williams, a wrestler and mixed martial artists, said yesterday that he witnessed Chauvin apply a “blood choke.”