This is the inquiry on the BBC World Service with me,

Helena Merriman.

Each week, one question, four expert witnesses,

and an answer. It's evening on the 25th of May and George Floyd has gone to buy cigarettes from a shop in Minneapolis in the US.

He's 46 years old, used to work as a bouncer but lost his job after

coronavirus hit. George Floyd pays for a cigarette using a $20 bill and then he leaves.

A few moments later one of the shop's employees calls the police,

saying he thinks George Floyd paid with counterfeit money. The police soon arrive. They walk

over to George's car, pull him out, and handcuff him.

As they try to put him in their police car, a struggle begins.

And that's when police officer Derek Chauvin turns up.

After a scuffle inside the police car, Derek Chauvin pulls George Floyd out of it,

and George falls to the ground, face down, still in handcuffs. People around them start filming as Derek Chauvin places his knee on George Floyd's neck.

In the mobile phone footage you see George Floyd lying there.

He says, I can't breathe over and over again, 16 times to be precise, and he pleads with the police to get off him.

At one point, near the end as he gets more desperate, he even calls out for his mother.

It's only when the paramedics arrive after George has gone silent and his body limp, but Derek Chauvin finally takes his knee off George's neck. He's held it there for eight years. that

the night,

that David, that night George Floyd is pronounced dead.

Last Friday, Derek Chauvin was charged with his murder.

And since then, riots have erupted in cities all over the US in outrage at this police violence.

That's because George Floyd's death is just the latest in a very, very long line of police killings of unarmed black men.

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