J. Alexander Keung, freed Friday evening on $750,000 bail, was stocking up at a Cub Foods in the Minneapolis suburb of Plymouth when another shopper started recording on her phone and moved in.
"What's your name?" asked the woman as she approached Keung, 26, in the tense video posted by a user who identified the shopper as their sister.
"Oh, yeah, that's me," replied the bearded Keung, appearing bewildered by the encounter, but calm.
look who my sister caught at Cub Foods in Plymouth. J. Alexander Keung, one of the officers who lynched #GeorgeFloyd in cold blood. pic.twitter.com/PVX4pFijab[Ed. note: @jk34d has a protected their account. The video is not viewable. A copy was uploaded to Youtube]
— josiah (@jk3rd_) June 21, 2020
"So you're out of prison, and you're comfortably shopping in Cub Foods, as if you didn't do anything," said the woman, as Keung stopped briefly to talk with her.
"I wouldn't call it 'comfortably.' I'd just say getting necessities," answered Keung, holding a package of Oreos in his hands.
The woman continued to give Keung a piece of her mind as he and another unidentified man walked off towards the self-checkout line.
"I don't think you should have that right. I don't even think you should be out on bail," she said.
"I can understand that," replied Keung. "I'm sorry you feel that way."
Working just his third shift as a cop, Keung helped restrain Floyd, who was black, as cop Derek Chauvin, who is white, fatally kneeled on his neck during a May 25 arrest for allegedly passing a bogus $20 bill.
Keung, Chauvin and two other cops have since been fired and charged in Floyd's death, which has sparked international unrest and calls for police reform.
The persistent woman continued to give Keung an earful as he checked out.
"You don't have the right to be here," she said. "You killed somebody in cold blood."
As she asked if Keung wanted to apologize or felt remorse, the ex-cop said he just wanted to finish shopping and be on his way.
"We don't want you to get your stuff," she said. "We want you to be locked up."
She went on to vow that Keung's life on the outside would be made miserable wherever he tries to go, adding that he was "lucky" that his home address isn't public knowledge.
"You're not gonna be able to comfortably live in Minnesota, or anywhere," she said. "And you will be going back to jail."
Comment: Thus does the media continues to stoke the emotions around George Floyd's unfortunate death. Keung seems to have done his best to remain calm while being harassed by a random person who probably has no connection to the case. What does she hope to gain, except to make a bad situation worse? What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Unfortunately, often this is how the justice system works in the US with regard to police, and if she has a problem with that, her beef isn't really with Keung. It's basically the twitter-mob mentality bleeding into the real world. As far as she's concerned, he's already been tried and convicted.
Twitterati have come down on both sides of the issue.