Derek Chauvin was bullied for being 'awkward loner', former classmates say he was quiet and disliked sports
Former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, who is charged with the second-degree murder of George Floyd, was bullied as a child as he grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood, said his ex-classmates.
Former classmates of the disgraced cop recalled to the Wall Street Journal that Chauvin was a "quiet and skinny" boy who was often bullied by more popular children while growing up in St. Paul Park, a suburb of Minnesota which was previously occupied by 96.6 percent white population. As a young kid, he was not one who stood out in a crowd as he was described as "an awkward loner."
In the early 1990s, the 44-year-old attended Park High School in Cottage Grove, where he was teased for being "different." Till he graduated in 1994, Chauvin had a tendency to keep to himself and did not have a keen interest in sports. "I remember the girls being the ones who would stick up for him in elementary school," one classmate told the outlet.
Another former classmate named Janille Stadt, said she often ate lunch with Chauvin at the school and despite the fact that a number of his peers chose not to interact with them he never showed any signs of aggression. She added that she extended the olive branch to Chauvin, whenever she could by inviting him out on weekend group plans with other girls at the school, but he would never accept.
The Journal further reported that the yearbook of Park High did not contain Chauvin's photos for his last two years, despite listing him as a graduate of the institute. A number of classmates also had a hard time recalling any memories of Chauvin, especially from sophomore year.
The first job that he held after graduating was that of a prep cook at a prime-rib buffet eatery called Tinucci's Restaurant. Before he got hired as a line cook at a local McDonald's, he earned a diploma in quantity food preparation from Dakota County Technical College. It was while working in the fast-food restaurant that he decided to pursue a career in law enforcement at Inver Hills Community College between 1995-1999. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in law enforcement in May 2006, from Metropolitan State University. Around the same time, he also served in the Army Reserve as a military police officer between 1996 and 2004.
He also spent a number of months working at a combat maneuver training center in Germany in 1999 as part of his training. Jerry Obieglo, a supervisor at the center, said that he remembered Chauvin as a "thin young man, who was never late and had the habit of keeping his uniform clean." Obieglo also mentioned that "Chauvin didn't drink and spent all of his spare time studying, most probably for a police academy exam. He rarely socialized outside of work hours, and at the times he did, he invariably ended up volunteering to be the designated driver for trips to local bars."
Scott Gunderson, who supervised Chauvin when he worked as a protection officer for a security firm called the Wackenhut Group, two years prior to arriving in Germany, said that he also could not recall any specific memories of Chauvin. "What this means is he wasn’t an especially exceptional employee or a problem employee," he told the Journal.
Chauvin became a police officer at the Minneapolis Police Department, in October 2001, at the age of 25, and spent the majority of his career with the department's Third Precinct. He was arrested after a video went viral of him placing his knee on George Floyd, an African-American man, on May 25, for nearly eight minutes before the latter passed out and died.