By Syndicated Content
By Jonathan Allen
MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - George Floyd's girlfriend smiled through tears as she told a jury on Thursday how they first met when he offered to pray with her, less than three years before his deadly arrest, and described how they both struggled with opioid addiction.
Courteney Ross was the first person who personally knew Floyd to testify at the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the white former Minneapolis police officer caught in widely seen video kneeling on the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old handcuffed Black man, for about nine minutes.
"It's a classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids," Ross, who wore a heart-shaped brooch on her black jacket, told the jury. "We both suffered from chronic pain: mine was in my neck, his was in his back."