Who is Amy Coughlin? Minneapolis mom claims Derek Chauvin knelt on 'screaming' autistic son, 12, in 2017
On the anniversary of George Floyd's death, a new revelation was made about Derek Chauvin's past as a police officer. A Minneapolis mother recently came forward to accuse the disgraced police officer of constricting her autistic child's breathing during an arrest in January 2017.
The child was only 12 years old then and was going through a mental health crisis that required interference from law. Their mother Amy Coughlin broke her silence surrounding the event from years ago and recalled the incident in the latest episode of the podcast 'Objections: With Adam Klasfeld'. It must be noted that this is not the first time that citizens have come forward to complain about Chauvin and his practices.
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'Felt afraid for my life'
On the night of January 16, 2017, a Minneapolis mother’s then 12-year-old autistic child lapsed into a mental health crisis. It reportedly left her and the rest of her family feeling unsafe. Seeking help for the situation, she placed an emergency call. But guess who turned up at her doorstep? It was none other than Derek Chauvin. Coughlin said that from the get-go, it seemed like a bad idea.
"I felt afraid for my life, and certainly for my kid’s life at that moment, because of the way that (Chauvin) was responding to my words," Coughlin reportedly told Law&Crime exclusively on the podcast 'Objections: With Adam Klasfeld'.
What happened that night?
Recalling the details of the evening, Coughlin claims that her child wasn't able to breathe as Chauvin had placed them in the prone position. "He had placed his knee on his back and close to his neck, if not on his neck," Coughlin said in the interview. "At that point, my child was just screaming ‘Mom,’ screaming. And I was pleading, ‘Please. He’s sick. Please. He’s not resisting. You’re hurting him. Please, get off of him. Please, let him up.'"
But it doesn't look like Chauvin paid any heed to her desperate pleas.
Who is Amy Coughlin?
Coughlin, the mother of the special needs child, made the revelation about Chauvin on the anniversary of Floyd's death. Chauvin’s brush with Coughlin and her child was months before he allegedly roughly handled another child. Chauvin allegedly hit a 14-year-old boy. Years after the encounter with Chauvin, the child came out as non-binary, adopted a different name, and identified by “they” and “them” pronouns. Law&Crime agreed to withhold their name out of respect for the family’s privacy. Just like Floyd, the boy allegedly could not breathe because Chauvin put them in the prone position in September 2017. Chauvin practiced the same level of force when he reportedly knelt on the boy’s back for 17 minutes.
At the time, upon entering the home, police spoke to the woman who claimed she had been attacked by her 14-year-old son and young daughter. Officers ordered the son to lie on the ground, but they refused. In a matter of seconds, Chauvin hit the teenager with his flashlight, grabbed their throat, hit them again with the flashlight, and then "applied a neck restraint, causing the child to lose consciousness and go to the ground", Matthew Frank, one of the state prosecutors, wrote in a court filing at the time.
More than four years after the encounter, Coughlin broke her silence on the 'Objections' podcast, since she reportedly now has more than her memory to back up her account. She even obtained a Minneapolis police report written by Chauvin, which she shared with the publication but apparently never reported the incident to local, state or federal authorities. However, she has been recovering any and all records that exist since viewing the shocking footage of Floyd’s murder.
"As soon as I’m telling this, I immediately flashed to seeing the video of George Floyd," Coughlin said. "And as soon as I saw Derek Chauvin, I immediately recognized him from this time, and I knew that was the same officer."
You can listen to her here.