MINNEAPOLIS — They met one night 4 summers in the past, and he or she was immediately drawn to his “great, deep, Southern voice.” She gave him her telephone quantity that evening, they usually turned shut, exploring town’s sculpture backyard and its vibrant restaurant scene. Soon she was merely calling him “Floyd,” similar to his buddies did.

For Courteney Ross, a lifelong resident of Minneapolis, George Floyd made her hometown appear new once more, undiscovered.

“Floyd was new to the city, so everything was kind of new to him,” Ms. Ross mentioned. “He made it seem like I was new to my own city.”

On the fourth day of testimony within the homicide trial of Derek Chauvin, the previous officer charged in Mr. Floyd’s demise, the prosecution offered a fuller image of George Floyd the individual. In testimony, Ms. Ross, who had been relationship Mr. Floyd for nearly three years, described how he was a caring companion, a devoted father and enthusiastic about train — a man who cherished to experience his bike and play ball with the neighborhood youngsters.

She talked about all these items, in addition to the ups and downs of their relationship, his love for his mom and the devastation he felt when she died a few years in the past.

And like so many Americans, the couple had a shared wrestle: opioid dependancy.

“Our story, it’s a classic story of how many people get addicted to opioids,” she mentioned. “We both struggled from chronic pain. Mine was in my neck and his was in his back.”

After three days of emotional testimony from bystanders who witnessed Mr. Floyd’s demise in police custody final May, prosecutors on Thursday nudged the trial ahead to one of many central points of the case: Mr. Floyd’s drug use.

In calling Ms. Ross to the stand, prosecutors each sought to humanize Mr. Floyd and seize the narrative round his wrestle with medicine. By exhibiting he had a excessive tolerance for opioids, prosecutors hope to cushion the blow of what’s anticipated to be Mr. Chauvin’s major protection — that Mr. Floyd died from a drug overdose, not from Mr. Chauvin’s knee urgent into his neck for greater than 9 minutes.

Over the almost three-year, on-and-off relationship between Mr. Floyd and Ms. Ross, there have been durations the place they have been clear, adopted by relapse. When they may not acquire prescriptions for opioids from docs, she mentioned, they purchased medicine on the streets.

“Addiction in my opinion is a lifelong struggle,” Ms. Ross mentioned, in generally halting, tearful testimony. “It’s something we dealt with every day. It’s not something that just comes and goes.”

On Thursday, prosecutors have been making an attempt to ascertain that Mr. Floyd — who had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system when he died, in accordance with the toxicology report — had a excessive tolerance for fentanyl, which might assist them rebut the protection’s claims that Mr. Floyd died of an overdose.

The protection’s deal with Mr. Floyd’s drug use, which arose quite a few occasions in pretrial arguments and motions, echoes different high-profile police brutality circumstances, particularly ones like this the place cops are accused of killing Black males.

It is a acquainted playbook: In the Rodney King case in Los Angeles within the 1990s, protection legal professionals introduced up Mr. King’s alleged drug use; after Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, officers mentioned Mr. Brown was excessive on marijuana; and within the trial of an officer in Chicago for the killing of Laquan McDonald, the protection offered testimony in regards to the sufferer’s drug use.

Yet as Mr. Chauvin, who’s white, went on trial, one of many major questions was whether or not this tactic would nonetheless work, particularly amid shifting attitudes in America about drug use and with the nation within the grips of an opioid epidemic.

“Tens of thousands of Americans struggle with self-medication and opioid abuse and are treated with dignity, respect and support, not brutality,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, legal professionals for the Floyd household, mentioned in a joint assertion on Thursday. “We fully expected the defense to put George’s character and struggles with addiction on trial because that is the go-to tactic when the facts are not on your side.”

Eric J. Nelson, Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, approached his cross-examination of Ms. Ross delicately, and began by saying: “I’m sorry to hear about your struggles with opioid addiction. Thank you for sharing that with the jury.”

Ms. Ross advised Mr. Nelson that they relapsed collectively final spring, and that Mr. Floyd was hospitalized for a number of days in March after she discovered him doubled over in ache from an overdose. Later that month, she thought they’d each managed to give up once more, however within the weeks earlier than he died in May, a change in Mr. Floyd’s conduct made her suppose he had once more begun utilizing.

“We got addicted and tried really hard to break that addiction many times,” she mentioned. “When you know someone who suffers from any type of addiction, you can start to kind of see changes when they’re using again.”

While the questioning of Ms. Ross might need appeared spontaneous and off-the-cuff to jurors and most people, the trial is nicely choreographed. All the witnesses are coached and ready beforehand, generally in a number of classes. Minnesota, in reality, has a number of the strictest guidelines in regards to the sharing of proof and testimony — so each the protection and prosecution know nicely upfront what both sides will current in a trial.

Jurors additionally heard on Thursday from two paramedics who mentioned that Mr. Floyd was in a dire state by the point they arrived on the scene on May 25. Derek Smith, one of many paramedics, mentioned he couldn’t discover a pulse when he felt Mr. Floyd’s neck as cops remained on prime of him.

“In lay terms, I thought he was dead,” Mr. Smith testified. In efforts to get Mr. Floyd’s coronary heart beating, paramedics used a machine to manage chest compressions and a defibrillator to supply an electrical shock, however nothing labored, Mr. Smith mentioned. Mr. Floyd was dropped at a hospital the place he was formally pronounced lifeless at 9:25 p.m.

Mr. Smith’s testimony might bolster prosecutors’ argument that it was Mr. Chauvin’s actions that led to Mr. Floyd’s demise. Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer has advised that the medicine Mr. Floyd had taken could have killed him.

Minutes after Mr. Floyd was taken away in an ambulance, Mr. Chauvin advised a supervisor that cops “had to hold the guy down” as a result of he wouldn’t keep at the back of a police automobile and “was going crazy,” in accordance with new physique digicam footage performed in court docket.

The supervisor, Sgt. David Pleoger, testified that Mr. Chauvin had not talked about making use of stress to Mr. Floyd’s neck till later, after they arrived at a close by hospital and realized that Mr. Floyd was not doing nicely. Sergeant Pleoger, who has since retired, mentioned that based mostly on physique digicam movies from the scene, he thought the cops ought to have stopped holding Mr. Floyd down as soon as he turned unresponsive.

“When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers, they could have ended their restraint,” Sergeant Pleoger mentioned.

In the sooner testimony, Ms. Ross additionally mentioned that Mr. Floyd referred to her and his personal mom, who died in 2018, by the identical nickname: “Mama.” Mr. Floyd had referred to as out for “Mama” as Mr. Chauvin knelt on his neck earlier than his demise.

Mr. Floyd had moved to Minneapolis from Houston on the lookout for a contemporary begin, however after his mom died, Ms. Ross mentioned, he modified. “He seemed like a shell of himself,” she mentioned. “Like he was broken. He seemed so sad. He didn’t have the same kind of bounce that he had.”

On Thursday, jurors heard not solely about Mr. Floyd’s wrestle with medicine, but in addition particulars about his relationship with Ms. Ross.

She first met him at a Salvation Army homeless shelter the place Mr. Floyd labored as a safety guard. One evening, he noticed her ready within the foyer to speak with the daddy of her two youngsters in regards to the birthday of one in all their sons. Mr. Floyd sensed that she was upset.

“He was like, ‘Sis, you OK, sis?’” Ms. Ross recounted. He advised her she was not OK.

“He said, ‘Can I pray with you?’”

“This kind person just to come up to me, and say can I pray with you, when I felt alone in this lobby,” she mentioned. “It was so sweet at the time. I had lost faith in God.”

Tim Arango reported from Minneapolis, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs from New York and Julie Bosman from Chicago.