Meshah Hawkins couldn’t believe that the man in the video who was facedown on the pavement, his neck pressed under the knee of a Minneapolis cop was her childhood friend George Floyd. Then she heard his voice. “Please,” the man begged the officer, as well as several others standing nearby. “Please, I can’t breathe.” Hawkins, sitting in her Houston home, was horrified. “When I heard his voice crying out,” she said, “when I heard the pain in his voice, it broke my heart.” She couldn’t bear to watch anymore, and she shut off the video taken on Monday.