George Floyd’s younger brother revealed that he still watches the heartbreaking video of the 46-year-old’s death every day and “is so traumatized by the event”.
Speaking to Davina McCall and Philip Schofield on ‘This Morning‘ on Tuesday, June 23, Philonise Floyd spoke about his horror after finding out about George’s death and how he was still struggling to come to terms with how anyone could kneel on another person’s neck for so long.
George, a truck driver, had died in the custody of four Minneapolis Police officers, Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, on Memorial Day after he was confronted for allegedly using a counterfeit bill to buy cigarettes. In a video, that has now been viewed hundreds of millions of times on social media, Chauvin could be seen kneeling on George’s neck for almost eight minutes even as the 46-year-old begged for his life, gasped, “I can’t breathe,” and called out for his mother before losing consciousness and becoming unresponsive.
While George was eventually rushed to a hospital, it proved too little, too late. He was declared dead the same evening, with his passing sparking protests against police brutality and racial injustice nationally, and internationally.
Philonise shared that he still watched the horrifying video every day and still can’t wrap his head around it. “Every day I watch that video, think about my brother pleading for his life. People say eight minutes 46 seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to me, just sitting there,” he said. “Because I have tried, we have all tried getting down on one knee. And it hurts every day thinking about it because I don’t want that to happen to anybody else in life.”
Asked how he felt about George’s death in police custody, Philonise said he was “extremely angry” and that, while he knew such incidents had happened many times before, he never expected it to happen to someone he knew and loved.
“I was extremely mad at the time, I had a lot of rage in me, a lot of anger,” he said, speaking of his death. “Just like everybody else around the world, but I never would have thought that it would even come to my front door like this and I was always like, ‘Why are so many black men dying because black lives matter?’ And when it happened to my brother, I was just like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this.’”
“And I didn’t want to come outside anymore, because I was like, ‘an, if they killed him, they’ll kill me,’” he continued. “Because he’s not that type of guy. So it just hurt a lot. So I just wonder every day, especially coming through the street, coming from work, will I get pulled over and will I get killed?”
Philonise also paid tribute to his older brother and said he was a “loving person” who never wanted anyone to be sad and enjoyed dancing with his mother. “He loved his kids, he loved us, he loved his mom,” he said. “He was just a great person to be around. He always was trying to pull you up when you were down. He never wanted you to be sad. He thought life was better than anyone else wanted it to be, because he was always saying, ‘Hey man, we shouldn’t be down… It’s a party right now, let’s have some fun.’”
