George Floyd’s brother is considering suing Kanye West over comments referring to his brother’s death from fentanyl use.
The rapper and fashion designer, who legally changed his name to Ye, was on an episode of the “Drink Champs” podcast when he discussed Floyd’s death at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
“I watched the George Floyd documentary directed by Candice Owens. One of the things his roommates said they wanted a tall man like me, and on the day he died, he recited an eight-minute prayer,” West said. podcast. “They hit him with fentanyl. If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”
Last year, a jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for immobilizing his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes in May 2020, while Floyd was handcuffed and said, “No I can breathe.”
“We are looking into a lawsuit on behalf of George Floyd’s brother Philones, regarding Kanye’s false statement about Floyd’s death,” Lee Merritt, a lawyer representing the Floyd family, told ABC News.
“The claim that Floyd died from fentanyl, not the brutality that has been criminally and civilly proven, undermines and detracts from the Floyd family’s fight,” Merritt chirp Sunday.
West’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.
Hennepin County medical autopsy report found that Floyd did have fentanyl in his system, but died from a combination of causes, including “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement, restraint, and neck pressure.”
However, during Chauvin’s experiment, Dr. Martin Tobin, a physician in pulmonology and critical care at Loyola University Medical Center and Heinz Veterans Hospital in Illinois, testified that Floyd died “of low oxygen,” causing brain damage. It made his heart stop.
Tobin exclude The possibility that fentanyl present in Floyd’s system during the autopsy may have played a role in his death because his respiratory rate was normal when the restriction began and that fentanyl, or at least a large dose of it, would have lowered his respiratory rate.
The West has been embroiled in an ongoing controversy in recent weeks.
Kanye West organizes his first rally in support of his presidential candidacy in North Charleston, South Carolina, July 19, 2020.
Randall Hill/Reuters, File
On October 8, West posted a highly offensive tweet about the Jewish community, referring specifically to the defensive alert used by the US armed forces.
Following this tweet and the immediate reaction, producers of HBO’s “The Shop: Uninterrupt” have pulled an episode of West, after he allegedly made hateful comments on the show.
ABC News’s Meredith Delisso and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
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