Floyd 'a big momma's boy,' brother says

[PROSECUTOR]: “Sir, could you please for the jury describe George Floyd’s relationship with his mother.”

[PHILONISE FLOYD]: “Oh, it was one of a kind….”

George Floyd stood out among his siblings for the way he adored his mother, his younger brother Philonise Floyd testified on Monday in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Due to be one of the last prosecution witnesses, Philonise was called under a Minnesota doctrine that lets loved ones reminisce about a crime victim in what is called "spark of life" testimony.

“He would always be up on our mom. He was a big momma's boy. He would lay up on her in the fetus position like he was still in the womb."

Philonise also was used by the prosecution to undermine an argument made by Chauvin’s lawyers that when George is heard in body-cam footage telling police he was quote, “just hooping earlier," he was referring to drug use.

Prosecutors set out to show that that was strictly basketball talk for Floyd - who once played on a community college basketball team in Florida.

[PROSECUTOR]: "And when he would talk about playing basketball, would he use any particular term or phrase?"

[PHILONISE FLOYD]: "Oh, he said, 'Hey man, let's go hooping.’ And we would always say, 'C'mon, let's go.' We always went hooping. ”

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[DR. JONATHAN RICH]: “I believe that Mr. George Floyd’s death was absolutely preventable.”

Earlier in the day, Dr. Jonathan Rich, a cardiologist and medical school professor at Northwestern University, testified that there were several moments when Chauvin could have intervened to save Floyd's life.

Rich echoed testimony from other medical experts supporting the conclusion by the Hennepin County chief medical examiner that Floyd's death was a homicide at the hands of police.

"After reviewing all of the facts and evidence in the case, I can state with a high degree of medical certainty that George Floyd did not die from a primary cardiac event, and he did not die from a drug overdose."

Judge Peter Cahill also denied a request by Chauvin’s lawyer to sequester the jury in light of the fatal police shooting a day earlier of a Black man named Daunte Wright in a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, which the city’s police chief called accidental.

The judge said he would sequester jurors, however, once they begin deliberations in the Chauvin case.