A former Minneapolis club owner disclosed that both George Floyd and the fired police officer in whose custody Floyd died Monday used to work security at her club.
Maya Santamaria told KSTP in Minneapolis that Floyd and Derek Chauvin worked security at El Nuevo Rodeo up to the end of last year. Santamaria said she sold the building, which she owned for 20 years, a few months ago.
“Chauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open,” Santamaria told the news station. “They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside.”Santamaria said she was unsure if the men knew one another because there were often more than a dozen security officers working at the same time on busy nights.
“They were co-workers for a very long time,” Jenkins said.
The former club owner, who operates La Raza 95.7 FM radio, said she initially did not recognize either Chauvin or Floyd in the now-infamous video that shows Chauvin holding Floyd to the pavement with a knee to the black man’s neck.
“My friend sent me (the video) and said, ‘This is your guy who used to work for you,’ and I said, ‘It’s not him.’ And then they did the close-up, and that’s when I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s him,’” Santamaria said. “I didn’t recognize George as one of our security guys because he looked really different lying there like that.”Floyd’s death has provoked days of fires and violent protest in Minneapolis and beyond as activists demand the former officers be charged with murder.
One person was shot and killed near the protest site Wednesday night and on Thursday night, protesters set fire to a Minneapolis police precinct.
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