Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Three former Minneapolis on trial on federal civil rights charges in the killing of George Floyd aren't as familiar to most people as Derek Chauvin, a fellow officer who was convicted of murder last spring.
Thomas Lane and J. Kueng were the first officers to respond to a report that Floyd had tried to pass a counterfeit US$20 bill, and they helped Chauvin restrain Floyd. Tou Thao, the second-most senior officer on the scene after Chauvin, held back a group of bystanders shouting at the officers to get off Floyd.
Lane and Kueng were rookies just a few days into their jobs as full-fledged officers. Though both took note of Floyd's deteriorating condition -- Kueng remarked that he couldn't find a pulse, and Lane asked if they should flip Floyd onto his side -- neither tried to stop Chauvin as he pressed his knee into the handcuffed Black man's neck.
After the federal trial, Lane, Kueng and Thao face state charges of aiding and abetting murder.
Here's a further look at the three former officers:
Thao was Chauvin's partner that day. Thao, a Hmong American, had been with the Minneapolis Police Department for around 11 years, starting as a community service officer, a program meant to foster diversity by grooming potential cops. He had been a full-fledged police officer for more than eight years.
Thao joined the force part time in 2008 while attending North Hennepin Community College. He was laid off temporarily at the end of 2009 during a budget crunch. He also previously worked as a security guard at Boston Scientific facilities in the Minneapolis area, as a supermarket stocker and as a trainer at a McDonald's.
City records show six complaints were filed against Thao. He was also the subject of a 2017 federal lawsuit accusing him and another officer of excessive force. According to the lawsuit, Lamar Ferguson claimed that in 2014, Thao and his partner stopped him and beat him while Ferguson was on his way to his girlfriend's house. The lawsuit was settled for $25,000.
Thao's attorney is Robert Paule.
Lane, who is white, joined the department in early 2019 as a 35-year-old cadet -- much older than most rookies. He had no complaints in his file during his short time on the force.
According to the Star Tribune, he followed three generations of men from his mother's family into the Minneapolis Police Department, including his great-great-grandfather Michael Mealey, who was chief from 1911 to 1912.
His previous jobs included stints as a corrections officer at Hennepin County's juvenile jail and as an assistant probation officer with a Ramsey County residential program for juvenile offenders. The University of Minnesota graduate also said on his employment forms that he had done volunteer work tutoring Somali youth and at-risk elementary school students, and with a police activities league for kids on Minneapolis' predominantly Black north side.
Lane's attorney is Earl Gray, who represented former Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter, who was convicted of manslaughter in December in the shooting death of Daunte Wright. Gray also was on the defense team that won an acquittal in 2017 for former St. Anthony Officer Jeronimo Yanez in the shooting death of Philando Castile.
Kueng, who is Black, was the youngest of the four officers at the scene. He was partnered with Lane that day. He was raised by his mother in north Minneapolis.
Family members told The New York Times in 2020 that Kueng, the son of a white mother and Nigerian father, wanted to become a police officer to bridge the gap between police and the Black community. Two of his siblings have spoken out critically about his role in Floyd's killing.
His personnel file, which says he speaks, reads and writes Russian, did not list any disciplinary actions.
Kueng was a 2018 graduate of the University of Minnesota, where he worked part-time in campus security. Like Thao, he was also a community service officer. He also worked nearly three years as a theft-prevention officer at the former Macy's in downtown Minneapolis. And he worked short stints as a stocker at the downtown Target store, and as a youth baseball and soccer coach in Brooklyn Center.
Kueng and family members travelled to Haiti to volunteer after the 2010 earthquake, according to relatives and his attorney.
Kueng's attorney is Tom Plunkett, who helped represent former Minneapolis Officer Mohamed Noor in the 2017 shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. Noor's conviction for third-degree murder was overturned, but his manslaughter conviction stands.
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that it has reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, a key terminal for the entry of humanitarian aid that was closed over the weekend after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers nearby.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.