The wife of the white police officer charged with killing George Floyd has now filed for divorce from him, her lawyer said Friday.
The announcement that Kellie Chauvin, a former Mrs Minnesota winner, is seeking a divorce from Derek Chauvin comes on the same day that the fired cop was charged with murder over Mr Floyd’s death on Monday.
“This evening, I spoke with Kellie Chauvin and her family. She is devastated by Mr Floyd’s death and her utmost sympathy lies with his family, with his loved ones and with everyone who is grieving this tragedy. She has filed for dissolution of her marriage to Derek Chauvin,” Sekula Law Offices said in a statement obtained by WCCO.
“While Ms. Chauvin has no children from her current marriage, she respectfully requests that her children, her elder parents, and her extended family be given safety and privacy during this difficult time.”
Mr Chauvin, 44, was taken into custody on Friday and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. His bail was set for $500,000.
The arrest follows days of nationwide protests and riots demanding his arrest, after he was caught on video kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck while arresting him for allegedly trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill at a deli.
According to the criminal complaint against Mr Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer was said to have had his knee on Mr Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, with nearly three minutes of the time being after Mr Floyd had become non-responsive.
Mr Floyd was then taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
DailyMail.com revealed Thursday that Kellie herself had a run-in with the law for her own forgery-related incident.Â
She was charged with writing a bad check at a grocery store for $42.24 in February 2005, when she was married to her late ex-husband, Kujay Xiong, and living in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Despite multiple letters being sent to her home about the bad check, she failed to pay the amount due by July 2005, a criminal complaint was filed against her in August of that year.
Kellie eventually paid the money and the case was dismissed.
Derek and Kellie, then a radiologist, met at Hennepin County Medical Center when he brought a suspect in for a health check before an arrest, returning to the hospital shortly after their initial meeting to ask her out.
It was the same medical center where Floyd was declared dead on Monday.
The couple married around 2010.
As part of a press push for her bid for beauty contest Mrs. Minnesota America 2018, Kellie raved about Derek in an interview from 2018, telling the Pioneer Press: ‘Under all that uniform, he’s just a softie.’
She also told the outlet: “He’s such a gentleman. He still opens the door for me, still puts my coat on for me. After my divorce, I had a list of must-haves if I were ever to be in a relationship, and he fit all of them.”
Kellie told the paper she fled Laos with her family as a child and came to America as a refugee.
She won the Mrs Minnesota contest in October that year and went to Las Vegas in 2019 to compete for the national round of the beauty pageant.Â
Kellie now works as a realtor with Re/Max Results.
She had two children with her first husband, who has since died.
On Thursday evening it was revealed Floyd had actually worked with Chauvin as security guards at the El Nuevo Rodeo club, the club owner confirmed.
‘Chauvin was our off-duty police for almost the entirety of the 17 years that we were open,’ Maya Santamaria told KSTP-TV.
Santamaria said that she is not sure if the two men knew each other since there were some two dozen security guards, including off-duty officers, working at her club on any given night.
But she revealed there were occasions when they would have been working at the same event.
‘They were working together at the same time, it’s just that Chauvin worked outside and the security guards were inside.’
According to Santamaria, Chauvin had a tendency to flash his temper and overreact to situations.
“He sometimes had a real short fuse and he seemed afraid,”she said.
“When there was an altercation he always resorted to pulling out his mace and pepper spraying everybody right away, even if I felt it was unwarranted.”
The outcry has now reached his front door, as angry protesters drew in chalk on the road and sidewalk outside the couple’s $260,000 home in Oakdale: ‘A murderer lives here’.