Facts: Harder to Find in the Floyd Death

Discussion

As I write this the official Hennepin County link to the PDF of the Medical Examiner’s report on the causes of death for the George Floyd death has gone dead. It’s been moved, changed, or removed just a few days after its release. I am writing this because it irritates me that <<they>> PULLED the Floyd autopsy I linked to two days ago

See https://www.hennepin.us/-/media/hennepinus/residents/public-safety/documents/Autopsy_2020-3700_Floyd.pdf 

Obfuscation of the facts is one way to tell a lie. Making it harder to find is another. Both are complaints I’ve had for the past five years investigating transparency in governance.

Fortunately there is social media which is uncontrolled and uncensored; Telegram.

Ironically Americans must go to a Russian-constructed system (Telegram and Telegraph) to find safe harbor from censorship and obfuscation.

I easily searched and retrieved the mirrored autopsy report from a reliable site and updated my links. Let’s walk through some of the comments I found online in the anonymous realm which dissects this report. Here’s analysis I found and edited.  

Autopsy Analysis of George Floyd

"The George Floyd autopsy report is out. The report is 20 pages long, and it is detailed. The autopsy was performed by a board-certified forensic pathologist and reviewed by a second board-certified forensic pathologist prior to release. 

The autopsy was thorough, the report fair, and unbiased.

The first thing that jumps out when reading the Floyd autopsy report:

That is a direct quote. 

Let’s take these point by point starting with something obscure, but relevant for establishing superficial factors of neck trauma.

There were no facial, oral mucosal, or conjunctival petechiae noted. 

Defining Petechiae

Most people have never heard the word Petechiae. Petechiae is a pinhead size red or purple spot on the surface of the skin which is the result of tiny ruptures in blood vessels resulting in hemorrhage just below the skin. 

1-Petechiae are normal and expected when air and blood flow are cut off at the neck by any mechanism. 

2-The eyes are the best place see petechiae. 

If you cut off blood circulation, blood pressure spikes up which breaks blood vessels, and that causes petechiae.

Impact of Knee on Neck

The pathologist that did the autopsy dissected George Floyd's neck muscles layer by layer. 

1-The dissection did not find any contusion or hemorrhage in any of the muscles. 

2-If Derek Chauvin's knee on George Floyd's neck cut off blood flow, the pressure would have ruptured blood vessels, which would have caused bleeding into the surrounding tissue. 

3-The bleeding would have been massive and visible to the naked eye. 

If Chauvin's knee cut off Floyd's air supply, the pressure would have broken the esophageal cartilage. That is 100% certain. 

Place your thumb and index on your esophagus. Press backward into your neck. When you get as far back as you can comfortably push, lock your fingers, pull them out and look how big your esophagus actually is. 

Note: You don't collapse the esophagus to the point of cutting off air flow without breaking the cartilage. 

In a forensic autopsy, the pathologist examines the esophagus in place, then removes the entire esophagus and cuts the entire length open and examines the inside.

1-Floyd's neck and esophagus did not have any trauma. 

2-The thyroid cartilage and hyoid bone were both intact and unbroken. 

3-The cervical spinal column was palpably stable and free of hemorrhage. 

4-The anterior muscles of neck and laryngeal structures were trauma free. 

Other Traumatic Evidence

1-There was no scalp soft tissue, skull, or brain trauma noted.

2-There were no chest wall soft tissue injuries, vertebral column injuries, or visceral injuries. 

Conclusion: This means Floyd's internal organs did not show any trauma. 

Floyd did have a single rib fracture from CPR. That is normal.

The pathologist rolled Floyd's body over and incision the posterior and lateral neck, shoulders, back, flanks, and buttocks looking for deep tissue trauma. 

Cuts and Bruises

1-The pathologist did observe cutaneous injuries to the forehead, face, upper lip, the mucosal injuries of the lips, cutaneous injuries to the shoulders, hands, elbows, and legs. 

2-Cutaneous injuries are confined to the skin. There was no trauma below the skin. The pathologist noted and documented patterned contusions and abrasions to the wrists consistent with handcuffs. 

Conclusion: Some of the injuries were healing and happened before Floyd's arrest. The rest were probably the result of scraping contact with pavement during the arrest. 

Final Comments on Neck and Restraint

If you watched the video, you can hear Floyd saying he can't breathe. If you can't breathe, you can't say you can't breathe. Once the body cam footage was available weeks after the riots began, it was noted that Floyd said he couldn’t breathe early on in the detention process. If this were anxiety induced, or drug induced, it’s very likely that this was true... but sitting in the back of an air-conditioned squad car probably would have helped his situation, not hindered it. Just because someone claims physical distress doesn’t mean police officers apprehending that person are obliged to just ‘only-only-oxen-free’ let the person out of their handcuffs. I’m not making light of the situation and detest the knee on the neck methodology; however this didn’t come from nowhere, it came from a large meth-ed out perpetrator not getting into the transportation vehicle and resisting all efforts from several police officers...

The autopsy established that Floyd had a history of hypertension, hypertensive heart disease, severe arteriosclerotic heart disease, and an enlarged heart. Floyd had a left pelvic tumor which did not contribute to his death. 

Let’s look into a few of the other contributing factors that I think were relevant.

Viral — Coronavirus Positive

Floyd tested positive for COVID 19. (Ed. There is some evidence of altered mental capacity with coronavirus which has been seen globally. This is not something to be easily dismissed as a contributing factor to the behavior leading up to the events during arrest.)

Toxicology Reveals Logical Contributing Factors

Toxicology puts the nail in the coffin of Ellison's murder charge. Floyd was a multiple drug user. The Tox report also shows some issues with lifestyle which are considered legal, but risky for those who have heart issues or hypertension.

Recap of Facts

1-The individual that called 911 said that Floyd was extremely drunk and not in control of himself. On one video, Floyd's legs buckled and he fell beside a squad car. That shows a loss of control.

2-Floyd tested positive for Fentanyl 11 ng/mL. Blood concentrations of 7 ng/ml have been associated with fatalities where multi drugs were used. 

Floyd tested positive for Norfentanyl at 5.6 ng/mL a metabolite of Fentanyl. 

NOTE: The body metabolizes Fentanyl into Norfentanyl.

3-Floyd tested positive for 4-ANPP 0.65 ng/mL. 4-ANPP is an intermediate in the synthesis of fentanyl and related opioids and is often found as an impurity in fentanyl preparations.

4-A urine drug screen confirmation 86 ng/mL of free morphine. 

(NOTE: The body metabolizes opioids like Fentanyl into morphine.)

5-Floyd tested positive for 11-Hydroxy Delta-9 THC 1.2 ng/mL; Delta-9 Carboxy THC 42 ng/mL; Delta-9 THC 2.9 ng/mL. That means he smoked weed.

6-Floyd tested positive for Caffeine. Apparently Floyd ate No-Doz by the handful and slugged down 5-hour Energy Drinks, which are caffeine based. 

7-Floyd had 19 ng/mL of Methamphetamine in his system. Methamphetamine can cause confusion, hallucinations, convulsions, and circulatory collapse. 

Reasonable Assumption: A man with high blood pressure and heart disease should not be getting high on Meth, downing energy drinks and smoking weed to come down from it all.

Let’s take a closer look at the tox report:

Relevance: Caffeine may seem harmless, but it is a stimulant that increases heart rate and spikes blood pressure up. People with hypertension should limit their caffeine intake. Floyd apparently did not limit his caffeine intake.

Consequences for Drug Use

Microscopic Examination

There is one more section in the autopsy report that precludes murder charges: 

The microscopic examination is where the pathologist doing the autopsy takes multiple tissue samples from each organ in the body. The samples are sent into one end of Histology and come out the other end as slides that a pathologist can examine at the cellular level under a microscope.

Details of Examination

1-Seven slides of George Floyd's liver showed marked congestion. 

2-Eight slides of his kidney showed marked congestion.

3-Nine slides of Floyd's adrenal glands showed marked congestion.

4-Nine slides of his spleen showed marked congestion.

Marked used in this context means evident and clearly noticeable.

Brain

The most important slides, the slides with the big picture, concern Floyd's brain. The pathologist that did the autopsy took tissue sections from Floyd's hippocampus, cerebellum, cerebral cortex, and midbrain.

1-The microscopic architecture of Floyd's brain was normal. 

2-The slides did not show any sign of hypoxic - ischemia, or reactive, neoplastic, or inflammatory changes.

Relevance: Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy is the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain. The lack of oxygen quickly damages brain cells. Floyd's brain cells did not show any hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. None. 

Final Conclusion

1-The video looks bad, but Chauvin's actions did not kill Floyd. The slides of Floyd's brain disprove what people think they saw in the video of Floyd's arrest. While this doesn’t excuse the eight minutes of knee on the neck, it wasn’t what killed Floyd.

2-Apparently, conspiracy theories sometimes are validated. Floyd was at least partially responsible for the events that took place, and without a directly related cause of death via medical examination, don’t expect a conviction for the charges the officers face.

3-Ethically, we should all wonder how we would expect a smaller, female officer to restrain and subdue Floyd without use of the knee on neck — if a male or female is to be considered equal in capacity, they must use the ‘tools of the trade’ available to them. This is a much larger topic of discussion.

4-Operationally, we should consider that use of a taser might have killed someone with the drugs and the past history of medical issues that Floyd had. Would this be a tool to be used by both male and female officers? This looks more and more like a no-win scenario for law enforcement. That isn’t fair to anyone, and leaves our country less prepared to complete its primary goal of providing security for its citizens.

Feel free to discuss this at my Truth: Harder to Find discussion group or just join the Truth: Harder to Find broadcast for more actionable intelligence and analysis done when it matters.