ALMOST TWO YEARS before George Floyd got under the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, Anton Black was pinned to the ground by police outside his home in Greensboro, Maryland.
On September 15, 2018, body cameras captured the 19-year-old struggling under the weight of multiple officers, struggling to breathe and screaming for his mother.
Black’s mother saw her son die right in front of her. He used his last breath to scream, “I love you.”
Dr. David Fowler, who was Maryland’s chief medical examiner for nearly two decades, classified Black’s death as an accident. Now he is an expert witness for Chauvin’s defense and is expected to testify about how Floyd died last year.
The forensic pathologist, who resigned from the Maryland medical examiner’s office in 2019, is one of many parties charged by the Black family for wrongful death and civil rights violations. The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in December, alleges that Fowler glossed over and obscured the police’s responsibility for Anton Black’s death.