Madeline Curry attends a protest with her father outside the Minneapolis 5th Police Precinct while wearing a protective mask that reads "I CAN'T BREATHE", Saturday, May 30, 2020, in Minneapolis.
One told Floyd it takes a lot of oxygen to talk, while another told angry bystanders that Floyd was talking, so he can breathe.That reaction -- seen in police restraint deaths around the country -- is dangerously wrong, medical experts say.
In the moments before he died, Floyd told police he couldnt breathe more than 20 times.
The volume of an ordinary breath is about 400 to 600 mL, but normal speech requires about 50 mL of gas per syllable, so saying the words I cant breathe would require 150 mL of gas, the authors wrote.
But the misperception that a talking person is able to breathe has also come up in other high-profile in-custody deaths.