GEORGE FLOYD'S COUNTERFEIT $20 BILL

He chatted with a store clerk about playing football. He grabbed a banana off a shelf, flipped through a wad of cash, and hugged and exchanged pleasantries with a woman, laughing with his hand on her back.

In surveillance footage played for the first time in a Minneapolis courtroom on Wednesday, the world got to see George Floyd as it never had before: He was just another customer in a corner store that he liked to frequent.

Within half an hour, Mr. Floyd would be handcuffed and face down on the pavement outside of Cup Foods, calling out for his mother as a police officer pressed his knee into Mr. Floyd's neck. Roughly two hours after he walked into the store he was dead.

The 19-year-old clerk who served Mr. Floyd at the corner store that day wondered whether the death was his fault because he had reported that Mr. Floyd used a fake $20 bill.

At the counter, Mr. Floyd can be seen offering the teenage clerk, Christopher Martin, a $20 bill in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. Mr. Martin said he quickly realized the bill was counterfeit; the blue pigmentation gave it away, he testified. For one brief moment, Mr. Martin thought to let it go and put it on his own tab — the store's policy was that fake money would be deducted from the paycheck of the employee who accepted it, he said. But then he changed his mind.

He told his manager, who sent him after Mr. Floyd. But after Mr. Floyd refused to come back in, another employee called the police.

To read the complete article, see:
Clerk Who Questioned $20 Bill Watched Floyd Arrest With ‘Disbelief and Guilt' (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/chauvin-trial-floyd.html)

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