CLAIM: Senator Dino Melaye Claims that Joe Biden Knelt to apologize to the daughter of Gorge Floyd
FALSE. False. The Child in the Picture is not Goerge Floyd’s daughter. He is a boy named C.J Brown, the son of a store owner in Detroit where Joe Biden went shopping for his grandchildren.
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A former Senator representing Kogi West in the National Assembly, Senator Dino Melaye on Monday claimed that the US President-elect Joe Biden knelt to publicly apologize to the daughter of Geroge Floyd.
“American President-elect publicly apologises to the daughter of George Floyd, a black American who was murdered by racist white American policemen. On behalf of the entire American Government and Citizens, I hereby apologise for the untimely death of ur dad. Can mallam B do this?” he wrote in a tweet.
With over 2.2million followers on twitter, the post already generated almost 2,000 retweets and more than 11thousand likes.
The story has also surfaced on a blog Lipglouse.
“Lipglouse reports that Former senator, Dino Melaye has compared Nigerian President Buhari with US President-elect, Joe Biden after Biden knelt down in the public and apologised to the daughter of George Floyd – a black American who was murdered by white American policemen.”, the blog posted.
The story already has over 2,000 views on Lipglouse.
A Ghanian actor, Don Little, had also in an interview used the same picture to claim that Joe Biden knelt before him. That has been fact-checked and labelled False.
Verification
George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African American man killed during an arrest in Minneapolis after a store clerk alleged he had passed a counterfeit $20 bill.
A white police officer named Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for a period initially reported to be 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
The picture was found on various news websites with similar information.
One of them is a news article by a media outlet, Detroit Free Press with the headline: ‘Joe Biden stops by Detroit’s Three Thirteen store, says he’s shopping for his grandkids’.
As reported by the NewsHerald and UK Telegraph, Joe Biden was shopping for his grandkids in Detroit when he took pictures with the owners of the store, Clement Brown, who got a fist bump with Biden. Brown’s son C. J. Brown is the child in the picture with Biden.
ABC News white house correspondent, Karen Travers, also posted some of the pictures on her twitter page.
“Quick stop at Three Thirteen clothing store in Detroit for @JoeBiden. He said he was buying for his grandkids. Store owner’s dad, Clement Brown, got a fist bump. Owner’s son, CJ, posed for some pics (but was shy-a lot of cameras there)” she wrote
The said picture was also posted by Joe Biden on his verified Instagram handle on 15 September. The picture was accompanied by a write up that did not suggest the child was George Floyd’s daughter.
“constant reminder of why I’m in this fight. We need to build an economy that gives them and their families a fair shot. We need to root out systemic racism so they grow up in a more just nation than we have now. We need to combat climate change so there’s a world left for them to thrive in. I believe in a better future for our children and will fight for them until the very end.” he wrote in a message accompanying the picture on Instagram.
Conclusion
False. The Child in the Picture is not George Floyd’s daughter. He is a boy named C.J. Brown, the son of a store owner in Detroit where Joe Biden went shopping for his grandchildren.
This Fact Check is produced per the Dubawa 2020 Fellowship partnership with Vision FM to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.
