Ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s criminal trial on Wednesday featured testimony from a former convenience store clerk who was handed a counterfeit $20 bill from George Floyd, which ultimately set in motion the man’s encounter with law enforcement.
Christopher Martin testified Wednesday that he watched Floyd’s May 25, 2020, arrest outside Cup Food store with “disbelief” and “guilt.”
“If I would’ve just not tooken [sic] the bill, this could’ve been avoided,” the 19-year-old Christopher Martin said, joining the burgeoning list of onlookers who have expressed a similar sense of helplessness and lingering guilt over Floyd’s death.
Martin said Floyd, 46, handed him what he believed to be a bogus $20 bill while buying cigarettes at the shop.Prosecutors used Martin to help detail the sequence of events leading to the arrest, and also played store security footage showing Floyd in Cup Foods for about 10 minutes, adding to the mountain of video documenting what happened that day.
Martin said he immediately believed the $20 that Floyd gave him in exchange for a pack of cigarettes was fake but accepted it, even though store policy was that the amount would be taken out of his paycheck if found to be counterfeit.
Martin said he initially planned to just put the bill on his “tab” but then second-guessed himself and told a manager, who sent Martin outside to ask Floyd to return to the store.
He said a manager asked another employee to call the police after Floyd and a passenger in Floyd’s vehicle twice refused to go back into the store to resolve the issue.
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