Both Houston natives, they had connected in Minneapolis through a pastor and had been in touch every day since 2016, Hall said in an interview with The New York Times a year ago.

Day three concluded in the murder trial for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. "But after prescriptions that were filled and we got addicted and tried really hard to break that addiction many times".

Prosecutors are seeking to demonstrate to the jury that Mr Chauvin had no justification for using a unsafe neck restraint on a compliant Mr Floyd.

Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter, accused of killing Floyd by kneeling on the 46-year-old Black man's neck for nine minutes, 29 seconds, as Floyd lay face-down in handcuffs.

The most serious charge against the now-fired white officer carries up to 40 years in prison. The defense argues Floyd's death was drug or health-related. An autopsy by the Hennepin County medical examiner found that Mr. Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system when he died.

In her testimony, Ross described how both she and Floyd struggled with their addiction to painkillers throughout their relationship.

She said they both had prescriptions, and when those ran out, they took the prescriptions of others and also used illegal drugs.

She said she did not, because she was off-duty.

"I was exhausted. We've been through so much, my sons and I, and (for) this kind person just to come up and say, 'Can I pray with you?' ... it was so sweet".

Ross says both Floyd and her suffered from opioid addiction, and they tried to help each other with their struggles.

Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson drove hard at Floyd's drug use in cross-examining Ross, asking questions aimed at showing the jury that it was risky.

Prosecutors from the Minnesota attorney general's office have told the jury they will hear evidence to contradict this, including Ross's testimony about his drug tolerance, and that Floyd's drug use is irrelevant to the charges against Chauvin.

In some of the video, Mr Floyd can be heard calling out "Mama!" repeatedly and saying, "Mama, I love you!". "Why you doing me like this?"

She said Floyd had been hospitalized for several days in March 2020 for an overdose.

Mr Martin said he told the store manager about the fake bill, however, and he was told to go outside and tell Mr Floyd to return to the store.

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Prosecutors said Maxwell would gain this victim's trust by asking her about family and other aspects of her life. Maxwell was arrested last July in New Hampshire-nearly a year after Epstein was charged and detained.

She suspected he began using again about two weeks before his death because his behaviour changed.

Ross began her testimony by telling how the two of them met.

"He said, 'Well, can I pray with you?'" she recalled, weeping at the memory. She said: "It's one of my favourite stories to tell".

The witness said she had gone to the shelter because her sons' father was staying there.

She was waiting in the lobby to see the father of her son, exhausted after closing up the coffee shop where she worked.

Floyd had been working as the head of security at a nightclub shortly before his death but had lost the job when the club closed because of the coronavirus, she said.

Under re-direct questioning from prosecutors, Ross clarified that Floyd also called his mother "mama". "I was exhausted. We've been through so much, my sons and I, and (for) this kind person just to come up and say, 'Can I pray with you?'.it was so sweet".

Asked by prosecutor Matthew Frank what he felt at the time, Martin became visibly upset and said "disbelief and guilt".

Floyd's death, along with the harrowing bystander video of him gasping for breath as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to get off him, triggered sometimes violent protests around the world and demands that the U.S. confront racism and police brutality.

During the trial, Hall has appeared in the police body camera footage shown by the prosecution.

Floyd is handcuffed and taken to a squad auto where he becomes increasingly distressed and struggles with the officers who are trying to put him in the back of the vehicle. He was taken to HCMC, where Floyd was pronounced dead at 9:25 p.m.

Based on CCTV footage, Mr McMillian appears to have been the first bystander on the scene of Mr Floyd's arrest.

"That's one person's opinion", Chauvin responded to McMillian as he got into his squad auto.

"But we've got to control this guy because he is a sizable guy", he told McMillian.

Meanwhile, Mr Chauvin's lawyer Eric Nelson said the case was about the evidence, not about a "political or social cause".