Washington: US President Joe Biden Tuesday narrated a conversation he had with George’s Floyd’s seven-year-old daughter in which he affirmed that her father’s murder had sparked global change.
Biden said he met Gianna Floyd at her father’s funeral in June last year and “told her how brave I thought she was.”
“I knelt down and held her hand, I said ‘Daddy is looking down at you so proud,'” said Biden. “She said to me then… ‘Daddy changed the world.'”
Biden said when he spoke with Gianna again on Tuesday after a US jury found Derek Chauvin, a former police officer guilty of murder of African-American Floyd on a Minneapolis street, he told her, “Daddy did change the world. Let that be his legacy: a legacy of peace, not violence — of justice.”
Chauvin was found guilty by a federal jury on three charges: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter.
“This is the time for this country to come together, to unite as Americans. There can never be any safe harbour for hate in America,” he said.
Biden described the verdict in the Chauvin trial a rare but “a giant step forward in the march towards justice in America.”
“Today the jury of Minnesota found the former police officer, Derek Chauvin, guilty on all counts in the murder of George Floyd,” said Biden, speaking from the White House.
“It was a murder in the full light of day and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see … The systemic racism… A stain on our nation’s soul, the knee on the neck of justice for Black Americans,” the president said.
He also called the guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial an indictment on unjust policing.
“No one should be above the law, and today’s verdict sends that message. But it’s not enough,” Biden said.
Following the guilty verdict, President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and first lady Jill Biden also spoke with Philonise Floyd, younger brother of George Floyd.
“He was just calling,” Philonise Floyd said of the Monday call on NBC’s “TODAY” show. “He knows how it is to lose a family member, and he knows the process of what we’re going through. So he was just letting us know that he was praying for us, hoping that everything will come out to be OK.”
Meanwhile, Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed the bystander video of Floyd’s death and testified in Chauvin’s trial, expressed her relief following today’s guilty verdict, CNN reported.
“I just cried so hard…This last hour my heart was beating so fast, I was so anxious,” she said on Facebook.
“THANK YOU GOD THANK YOU THANK YOU… George Floyd we did it!!…Justice has been served,” she wrote.
PTI