Christopher Martin: Cashier who sold George Floyd cigarettes tells jury he seemed ‘high’

Testimony helped fill in the moments that led to Mr Floyd’s arrest

During day three of testimony in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, Christopher Martin, a cashier at Cup Foods, helped shed light on the moments that led up to George Floyd’s fatal arrest.

Mr Martin, 19, was working on 25 May, 2020, when Mr Floyd came into the grocery store. He told jurors during the highly watched case in Minneapolis on Wednesday that he and Mr Floyd initially struck up a conversation about sports.

“It kind of took him a little long to get to what he wanted to say, so it would appear that he was high,” Mr Martin said.

Later on, Mr Floyd bought a pack of cigarettes with a $20 bill that Mr Martin said he believed might have been counterfeit due to a blue pigment.

After alerting his manager, the clerk walked outside to speak with Mr Floyd about it. The alleged counterfeit bill was what originally brought police to the scene.

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“He just seemed like he didn’t want this to happen,” Mr Martin said of their interaction. “He was kind of like, ‘Ah, why is this happening?’”

Mr Chauvin’s defence has argued the presence of drugs in Mr Floyd’s system was what lead to his death, rather than the former officer’s knee remaining on Mr Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes during the arrest.

“The evidence will show that Mr Floyd died of a cardiac arrhythmia that occurred as a result of hypertension, his coronary disease, the ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl, and the adrenaline flowing through his body – all of which acted to further compromise an already comprised heart,” attorney Eric Nelson said during his opening statement on Monday.

Lawyers for the state dispute this interpretation.

People who are having opioid overdoses, prosecutor Jerry W Blackwell argued on Monday, are “not screaming for their lives, they’re not calling for their mothers, they’re not saying ‘Please, please, I can’t breathe,’ that’s not what opioid overdose looks like.”