Former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao was sentenced Monday to four years and nine months in prison for aiding and abetting manslaughter in the 2020 murder of George Floyd, the black man who was pinned to the ground by the knee of another officer during a botched arrest, according to local media reports.
The sentence, handed down by Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill, was somewhat harsher than the four and a half years requested by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for Thao. The sentence will run concurrently with the three and a half years Thao previously received on a federal conviction for violating Floyd’s civil rights, Fox 9 in Minneapolis has reported.
In May, Cahill found Thao guilty of one count of accessory to second-degree manslaughter for his role in Floyd’s death. Thao, a nine-year veteran of the police force, was the fourth and final officer to be sentenced for the murder.
Derek Chauvin, the white officer who was recorded on a mobile phone while kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020, was found guilty of murder in 2021. For his part, Thao retained a small crowd of bystanders as Chauvin and two other officers subdued Floyd.
The other two officers on the scene, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, held Floyd’s knees and buttocks while Chauvin knelt on his neck. Lane and Kueng last year pleaded guilty in state court to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Lane was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. While Kueng was sentenced to three.
In a federal trial last year, Kueng and Lane were also found guilty of violating Floyd’s civil rights. Lane was sentenced to two and a half years and Kueng to three years in federal prison, concurrent with the state sentence.
Chauvin was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in state prison for the second-degree manslaughter of Floyd. Last year, he received a concurrent sentence of 21 years in prison on federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights.
