MINNEAPOLIS – A former club owner in Minneapolis says that both George Floyd and ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin worked security at her business.
Floyd died in police custody shortly after Chauvin was video recorded with his knee compressed on Floyd’s neck for an extended period of time.
Maya Santamaria said during an interview with KSTP-TV that both men worked security at her business, the El Nuevo Rodeo Club, until the end of last year.
“Chauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open,” Santamaria told KSTP-TV.
However, she is not sure if the two men knew each other since there were about two dozen security guards, including off-duty officers, working at her club on any given night. But she revealed there were occasions when they would have been working at the same event.
“They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside,” Santamaria said.
At first Santamaria said she did not recognize either one of her security guards in the video showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck not far from where they used to work.
“My friend sent me (the video) and said this is your guy who used to work for you and I said, ‘It’s not him.’ And then they did the closeup and that’s when I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s him,'” Santamaria said. “I didn’t recognize George as one of our security guys because he looked really different lying there like that.”
