For many people, this isn't really news but I feel it needs to be stressed again after all of the carnage and destruction that has occurred since his death.
Read that bolded sentence again. There was enough fluid in his lungs to weigh two to three times their normal weight.
This whole thing has been a farce since May 31, 2020. Charges should be dropped against the officers and they should sue the hell out of the state and county.
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These charges were based on the autopsy performed by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office and a private "re-autopsy" performed at the request of the Floyd family's attorney. Based on those procedures, the medical examiner issued a revised autopsy report stating that Floyd had died of "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression." In short, Floyd's death was allegedly caused by the manner in which the police had restrained him.
But the police defendants were charged before the medical examiner had received the report of Floyd's toxicology screen by NMS Labs of Horsham, Pennsylvania.
Then, on May 31, 2020, NMS Labs forwarded Floyd's toxicology report to the Hennepin County Medical Examiners' Office.
Quote:
At 7:30 p.m. on May 31, 2020, prosecutors "met" online with Dr. Andrew Baker, Chief Medical Examiner of Hennepin County, to discuss Floyd's toxicology report. Take a look at this recently released June 1, 2020, memorandum by Assistant County Attorney Amy Sweasy of that discussion.
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So there they were, staring at the just-received and damning toxicology report that blew to smithereens the whole prosecution theory that the police had killed Floyd. To their undoubted dismay, Dr. Baker, the chief medical examiner, had to concede that at 11 ng/mL, Floyd had "a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances." He also conceded that the fentanyl overdose "can cause pulmonary edema," a frothy fluid build-up in the lungs that was evidenced by the finding at autopsy that Floyd's lungs weighed two to three times normal weight.
Read that bolded sentence again. There was enough fluid in his lungs to weigh two to three times their normal weight.
LINKQuote:
This is consistent with Officer Kueng's observation at the scene that Floyd was foaming at the mouth and, as found at autopsy, that his lungs were "diffusely congested and edematous."
In other words, like a drowned man, Floyd's lungs were filled with fluid. And that was the obvious and inescapable reason why Floyd kept shouting over and over again that he couldn't breathe even when he was upright and mobile.
This whole thing has been a farce since May 31, 2020. Charges should be dropped against the officers and they should sue the hell out of the state and county.