Former police officer Alexander Kueng was sentenced this Friday to three and a half years in prison for his involvement in the murder of the African-American George Floyd in May 2020, an event that triggered a wave of racial protests in the United States.
The sentence is produced by virtue of an agreement reached by Kueng and the Prosecutor's Office by which the former agent pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree murder on the first day of this trial, by state court, in October.
In exchange, the charge of accessory to unintentional murder in the second degree was dropped.
Kueng appeared virtually before the Hennepin (Minnesota) court from the Ohio federal prison, where he is serving a sentence for violating Floyd's civil rights in another trial held against him by federal means.
Floyd died on May 25, 2020 after one of Kueng's colleagues, now former agent Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into the neck and back of the African-American, who was handcuffed and lying face down, for more than nine minutes.
The incident sparked a wave of protests and race riots in the United States unseen since the assassination of Martin Luther King in the late 1960s.
Another police officer, Thomas Lane, a rookie officer on his fourth day on the job, tied Floyd's legs together during the arrest, while Kueng held his torso and officer Tou Thao held back a crowd of angry bystanders.
Chauvin was convicted last year of murder and manslaughter in a state trial and was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
Additionally, he pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating Floyd's civil rights in December and was sentenced to 21 years in prison, to run concurrently with his state sentence.
