2 views of Floyd onlookers: Desperate to help, or angry mob

(AP) – To the prosecution, the witnesses who watched George Floyd’s body go still were regular people going about their daily lives when they happened upon the ghastly scene of an officer kneeling on a man’s neck.

Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell has called them “a veritable bouquet of humanity.”

But some of those people are being portrayed at trial as unruly, angry, even threatening by Eric Nelson, the attorney for former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin. Nelson has talked about the hostility the officers faced, how they were distracted and perhaps frightened by people at the scene.

Chauvin is charged with murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death.