Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been released on bail, reports confirm.
The killer cop – who sat on African-American citizen George Floyd and suffocated him back in March – was being held on 2nd degree murder.
Chauvin was released last night on $1,000,000 bail.
The 44-year-old is due to stand trial in March along with three of his former colleagues, accused of complicity, in the drama that sparked the largest anti-racist mobilization in the United States since the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Demonstrations have taken place in cities all across the world whilst some continue to this day in northern American cities such as Portland and Chicago.
He and his co-defendants, Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao, who had been released on bail for several weeks. The four men asked for the charges against them to be dropped, arguing that they had used reasonable force in the face of a struggling man.
The other three are accused of lesser crimes such as negligence as they casually stood by whilst Chauvin suffocated Floyd.
Chauvin’s lawyer argued against George Floyd’s death saying that he “probably died of a fentanyl overdose.”
These arguments have caused outrage amongst the Floyd family.
“It’s madness,” said his nephew Brandon Williams.
“He died because of a knee on his neck, the autopsy says so,” his brother Philonise Floyd added emotionally.
Chauvin was being held in a high security prison in Minnesota but is now free until his trial.
Alexander Kueng was filmed just weeks after the incident casually buying candy in a Minneapolis supermarket just blocks away from where Floyd was killed.
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