By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN
(CNN) — George Floyd moved to Minnesota for a fresh start — an opportunity to better himself and to be a better father.
And while so many now know the Houston native by his full name, those who knew him best called him Floyd.
He worked security at a restaurant where he developed a reputation as someone who had your back and was there for you when you were down.
“Knowing my brother is to love my brother,” Philonise Floyd, George’s brother, told CNN in 2020.
“He’s a gentle giant, he don’t hurt anybody.”
Floyd, 46, died on May 25, 2020, in the city he moved to for a better life. While being detained, Floyd was held down by a Minneapolis police officer’s knee. A video of the encounter, shows Floyd pleading that he is in pain and can’t breathe. Then, his eyes shut and the pleas stop. He was pronounced dead shortly after.
The video of Floyd’s last moments painted a stark picture of the ways Black people have long said the American criminal justice system dehumanizes them. Floyd’s death ignited widespread protests around the world, lasting for weeks in 2020.
The following statements were made in the wake of Floyd’s death and in the years since. CNN is reflecting on them five years later as Minneapolis is set to mark the anniversary with vigils and gatherings.
He was a coachable kid with a big heart
Floyd grew up in Houston’s Third Ward neighborhood and graduated from Jack Yates High School where he played football and basketball, according to CNN affiliate KPRC.
After high school, head basketball coach George Walker recruited Floyd to play for him at South Florida State College in Avon Park, Florida. Floyd was a student there from 1993 to 1995, Walker told CNN.
“He didn’t give me too much trouble as a basketball coach,” Walker said. “He was a pretty good athlete, averaged 12 to 14 points a game.”
Floyd was a coachable kid with a big heart, according to Walker’s wife, Gloria.
Of all the college athletes on the school’s team, she said Floyd had her attention the most “because he was just a fun person to be around.”
“He was never one that tried to blame others for his own mistakes,” she said. “He always owned up to them and always tried to do better.”
Philonise Floyd remembers the banana mayonnaise sandwiches and syrup sandwiches his brother would make the siblings.
“He was so much of a leader to us in the household, he would always make sure we had our clothes for school, make sure we would get to school on time,” Philonise Floyd said in the 2021 trial of one of the former police officers involved in his brother’s death. “He just was like a person that everybody loved around the community. He just knew how to make people feel better.”
He was trying to be a better father
Floyd moved to Minnesota for work and to drive trucks, according to friend and former NBA player, Stephen Jackson.
Jackson, a Houston native also, calls Floyd his twin.
“I’ve heard George in the last couple days more than I’ve heard my whole life, and we had a 21-plus (year) relationship,” Jackson told CNN. “His name was always Floyd, my twin.”
Floyd was known in the community as a protector and a provider who didn’t have a hateful bone in his body, according to Jackson. He got along with everybody and seldom wanted anything in return for helping someone out, Jackson said.
“The difference between me and bro was I had more opportunity than he did,” wrote Jackson, who won a championship with the San Antonio Spurs in 2003. “2 things we have in common both from the bottom and both of our names will live forever.”
Once Floyd moved to Minnesota, Jackson said Floyd talked at great length about his journey to create better opportunities for himself.
“The last time I talked to him was about a year ago and every conversation we had in that year was about bettering ourselves and being better fathers,” Jackson said. “That’s all he talked about.”
Floyd was the father to two daughters, according to Jackson.
“I want justice for his kids,” he said. “I want his kids to be taken care of. Their father is not here.”
Jackson vowed to support his friend’s children and “fill in for Floyd” and said he wanted to make sure they are provided for.
In Houston, Rose Hudson, who dated Floyd more than 20 years ago, told CNN affiliate KTRK that Floyd was a grandfather, but he never got to meet his granddaughter.
“I will just let her know what a great guy he was,” Hudson said. “He was a good father to his girls. I just have memories, that’s all I can give her, memories of her grandfather.”
Floyd worked security at Conga Latin Bistro, a restaurant serving Spanish and Latin food in Minneapolis, for five years, according to its owner, Jovanni Thunstrom.
Even though he was Thunstrom’s employee, the pair were also friends.
“He was loved by all my employees and my customers,” Thunstrom told CNN.
“I was looking at the video and I said that can’t be Floyd, but later it just blew out. It was Floyd. And that’s when it hit me, it hit me hard,” Thunstrom told CNN affiliate WCCO.
Floyd would help clean up after the bar had closed and was a “very nice guy and really good with customers,” according to Thunstrom.
“He stood up for people, he was there for people when they were down, he loved people that were thrown away,” Courteney Ross, Floyd’s girlfriend, told WCCO. “We prayed over every meal, we prayed if we were having a hard time, we prayed if we were having a good time.”
People who didn’t know Floyd were outraged, too
Anger over Floyd’s death went beyond his family and friends. A number of celebrities reacted to the incident on social media.
NBA player LeBron James shared a side-by-side photo on Instagram. On one side you can see a screen grab from the encounter between Floyd and police. In the photo on the left a Minnesota police officer’s knee can be seen on Floyd’s neck. In the photo on the right is the image of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling in protest during the national anthem for a preseason football game in 2016.
At the time, Kaepernick had said he would not honor a song nor “show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
James’ post is accompanied by the caption, “Do you understand NOW!!??!!?? Or is it still blurred to you?? #StayWoke”
Others sports figures like Formula One star Lewis Hamilton, NBA legend Michael Jordan and Kaepernick voiced their outrage over Floyd’s killing and paid respects to his memory.
Three days after Floyd’s death, rapper and songwriter Ice Cube even canceled an on-air appearance with Good Morning America saying, “After the events in Minnesota with George Floyd I’m in no mood to tell America, good morning.”
His family thinks police didn’t do enough to help him
From London to Sydney and Los Angeles to Philadelphia, tens of thousands of people marched in cities and small towns. They poured into busy streets, occupying popular landmarks, chanting, waving handmade signs and rekindling the Black Lives Matter movement.
Some of the protests were peaceful, while others were destructive.
In Minnesota, more than 500 members of the state’s national guard were sent to St. Paul, Minneapolis, and surrounding communities because of the increase in demonstrations in the area, officials said at the time.
Floyd’s family was out front calling for justice, saying the firing of the police officers involved in Floyd’s death was not enough. Over the years they’ve become vocal about police reform legislation, bonding with other families impacted by police brutality and racial injustice.
“They were supposed to be there to serve and to protect and I didn’t see a single one of them lift a finger to do anything to help while he was begging for his life. Not one of them tried to do anything to help him,” Tera Brown, Floyd’s cousin, told CNN in 2020.
The four former police officers involved in Floyd’s death were convicted on both state and federal crimes. Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed Floyd, is serving two sentences of more than 20 years in prison for a federal charge of depriving Floyd of his civil rights, and state charges of unintentional murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter.
Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, who helped restrain Floyd, and Tou Thao, who held a crowd of bystanders, were found guilty in federal court of violating Floyd’s civil rights and of failing to intervene to stop Chauvin during the restraint. They received sentences between two and a half and nearly four years in prison for those crimes.
The three officers were also given sentences of three to more than four years each for state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.
“Real justice in America will be (when) Black men and Black women, and people of color will not have the fear (of) being killed by the police just because (of) the color of their skin,” Floyd family attorney Ben Crump said said in 2021.
When Floyd’s family learned of the verdict in Chauvin’s case for the state charges, they described the moment as being “able to breathe again” and “monumental.”
“I will salute him every day of my life,” Terrence Floyd said in 2021. “He showed me how to be strong. He showed me how to be respectful. He showed me how to speak my mind. I’m going to miss him, but now I know he’s in history. What a day to be a Floyd, man.”
And while the verdict brought some closure, Philonise Floyd said at the time the fight against social injustice now goes beyond his brother.
“I’m not just fighting for George anymore,” he said at the time. “I’m fighting for everyone around the world.”
CNN’s Omar Jimenez, Josh Campbell, Ray Sanchez and Joe Sutton contributed to this report
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