Gianna Floyd, the 6-year-old daughter of George Floyd, gave her first public interview on ABC News following her father’s brutal death. She said in the interview, which played Wednesday on "Good Morning America," that she wants people to know "that I miss him." The child’s mother, Roxie Washington, was also part of the interview. She described her child’s father as a hardworking man who gave up his life in Houston to seek a better way forward for his family in Minneapolis.
"He just wanted her to have the best,” Washington said of Floyd and their daughter. “We were struggling so he did what he had to do as a man and he had to come here [to Minneapolis] to work. And he said I’m going to come back and get y’all." However, he never got that opportunity.
Floyd, who was suspected of forging a $20 bill, was held down while a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes on May 25, according to multiple media outlets. He later died in police custody. Although the officer, Derek Chauvin, was fired and charged with manslaughter and third-degree murder, Floyd’s death combined with repeated incidents of similar police brutality inspired thousands of people across the nation and the world to protest.
"Daddy changed the world," Gianna could be seen in viral video saying from the shoulders of longtime family friend and former NBA star Stephen Jackson.
He told reporters in the press conference Tuesday that his friend’s death didn’t make sense. “Why do we have to see a daughter getting raised without her father?” Jackson asked.
He pledged to be there for the child, to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day, and to wipe her tears. “I’m here to get justice and we gon’ get justice for my brother,” Jackson said. “We not leaving. We gon’ keep fighting.”
The family’s attorney, Chris Stewart, who also spoke at the press conference Tuesday, called for charges against the officers who witnessed Floyd’s violent detainment and either helped restrain him or did nothing to save him. Stewart mentioned the six Atlanta police officers who were immediately charged with excessive force after video showed them pulling Atlanta college students Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim out of a vehicle and shocking them with Tasers, allegedly for breaking the city’s curfew.
“Why can’t that be a blueprint of what should happen in these officer-involved situations?” Stewart asked. “The pictures last forever, but justice never truly comes in this, and time and time again we’re fighting these cases.”
Washington sobbed in her interview Tuesday, saying “this is what those officers took,” then went home to their families. “Gianna does not have a father. He will never see her grow up, graduate. He’ll never walk her down the aisle,” Washington said. “If it’s a problem she’s having, and she needs her dad, she does not have that anymore.
“I’m here for my baby, and I’m here for George because I want justice for him. I want justice for him because he was good no matter what anybody thinks. He was good, and this is the proof that he was a good man,” Washington added, pointing to her daughter.
Washington later told ABC News she still hasn’t found the words to tell Gianna the details of her father’s death. “She doesn’t know what happened. I told her Daddy died because he couldn’t breathe,” the mother said.
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