Jury selection continues in the case of Derek Chauvin, the now former Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of George Floyd. Chauvin was seen on video with his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes.

It happened shortly after a nearby storeowner called the police on Floyd for using a fake $20 bill.

“He had time to change his mind, he stayed on that young man’s neck for eight minutes; my son died in 74 seconds,” said Valerie Castille, the mother of Philado Castile.  

Valerie Castile is currently working to correct what she calls a long-standing trend of systematic racism in her community.

“My son was murdered after they stopped him for a broken taillight,” she said. “We’ve been working on the Philando Castle Bill ever since to try to correct some of these wrongs.” 

Philando Castile was in the car with his fiancé and her four-year-old daughter, when a Minnesota officer pulled them over in July of 2016. Castile’s girlfriend recorded most of the incident on her phone. She told law enforcement that her fiancé notified the officer he had a firearm, but shortly after he reached for his registration, he was shot.

The video was seen by millions of people; Castile was slumped over in his seat, covered in blood. His girlfriend and her daughter can be heard screaming from behind the camera.

A memorial including a photo of Philando Castile, center, on the gate to the governor's residence where protesters demonstrated in St. Paul, Minn., against the July 6, 2016 shooting death of Castile. (Jim Mone/AP)

St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter, but after 27 hours of deliberation, the jury found him not guilty. 

“Not getting that accountability is what opened the door for them to continue that trend – that murderous trend,” Castile told Spectrum News. “The death of George Floyd just took me back to that day of my son taking his last breath, saying ‘I wasn’t reaching.’ [He] made a dying declaration, but did that matter? My interpretation of a dying declaration is that it is supposed to supersede anything that you thought. You killed a man because of your imagination, and here we are again. That guy had eight minutes, not eight seconds. My son was murdered in 74 seconds. This man had eight minutes to change his mind, and he didn’t.”

Castile said she and her team have been working against police brutality and community development in her son’s name. The Philando Castile Omnibus bill also known as HF-784 in Minnesota is a proposed piece of legislation that aims to address biased targeting while implementing STEM training, food security, and technology access in urban neighborhoods.

“Minnesota lawmakers are calling the bill racist because it’s directed at improving the lives of Black People; we’ve been working at this for a long time, and they won’t even give us a hearing,” Castille said.

She is among a number of community activists across the country who are trying to make a change.

“I’m glad that young people in this generation are stepping up to fight this long fight,” Activist Connie Burton said. “I’m in my 60’s. I’ve been in this for a while, dating back to my earlier days of extensive research on the Emit Till case; I’ve been collecting data on the trend of police brutality against black people since then.”

Community activists who spoke with Spectrum News for this report say they are praying the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial doesn’t reflect the same lack of accountability that others have in the past.

A march in honor of George Floyd will take place on March 19 in St. Paul.