Dr. Andrew Baker who declared the death of George Floyd a homicide says that his opinion is unchanged since then and that is what he had put on Floyd’s death certificate last year.
The medical examiner testified that heart disease and usage of drugs contributed to Floyd’s death but the main cause of his death was the restraint of his body by the police officers and the compression of Floyd’s neck in the incident.
According to Dr. Andrew, Floyd had an enlarged heart with severe heart disease that required more oxygen to function. However, Baker has not concluded that lack of oxygen was the reason for Floyd’s death. Baker said that prior to conducting the autopsy he was aware that Floyd got unconscious in police custody and had died at a hospital.
To not be biased in his findings, Baker says he didn’t watch the video that went viral and took the world on the storm.
The findings of Baker turn out to be in contrast with other assessments that declared Floyd’s death a result of asphyxia.
Dr. Linday Thomas said that the primary cause of George’s death is low oxygen or asphyxia and she reached this conclusion primarily from the video that surfaced on the internet showing Floyd’s struggle to breathe. Thomas disregarded the prosecutor’s argument that Chauvin Killed George by kneeling on him for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds.
Eric Nelson, the attorney of Chauvin, stated to the jury that Floyd might have died for the severe heart condition that he had or because of the methamphetamine or fentanyl that was discovered in his body.
On Friday, Nelson posed hypothetical situations to two medical experts. He asked Baker and Thomas about their assessment if the only information they had was Floyd’s use of drugs and the heart disease that he had, not the video.
Baker agreed to Nelson’s statement that Floyd’s drug usage and heart disease contributed to this death but he was explicit in his opinion that these things were not the main reason that caused him to die. He said that neither his intake of the drug nor his heart disease caused the neck restraint or the subdual.
Prosecutor Backwell asked Andrew Baker about his opinion about the cause of
Floyd’s death to which he responded stands with his findings that the death of George Floyd was indeed a homicide and that his opinion remains unchanged. He also asserted that any of Floyd’s medical conditions were not the direct cause of his death.
