Freelance photojournalist Linda Tirado has checked into a Tennessee hospice. She is best known for getting shot with non-lethal bullets by Minneapolis police in 2020 during demonstrations over the murder of George Floyd.
In a statement, the National Press Club expressed their love and admiration for Tirado and pledged financial support to help with her medical expenses. The claim is that Tirado suffered a brain injury when she was shot and has now developed dementia. She lost vision in her left eye.
When Tirado went from Nashville, Tennessee, to Minneapolis in May 2020 to chronicle the upheaval brewing after Floyd’s death, she was 38 years old. A cop from Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, who was white, kneeled on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. A jury decided that this was the cause of Floyd’s death.
Tirado sued after she was shot, claiming that the police used foam bullets to shoot her in the face and disregarded her press accreditation. Although she received $600,000 from the city, the majority of that sum has already been spent on her medical bills.
“Getting ready to die” is what Tirado recently wrote on her own Substack, in which she also detailed some of the feelings she’s been experiencing. Thanks to her early diagnosis, she has plenty of time to write another book or compile all her notebooks into one place. She remarked that maybe someone would read them and find the words to publish them on her behalf.
Tirado said she is overwhelmed with an overwhelming array of emotions—joy, serenity, agony, and fear—that merge into one overwhelming feeling. This overwhelming mix of feelings can only be defined as raw, pure, beautiful, flawless, and transient.
Protests broke out in other large U.S. cities after Floyd’s death, including Minneapolis.
In 2021, Officer Chauvin was found guilty of murder for the act of restraining Floyd by kneeling on his neck. Protests and rioting broke out around the country after Floyd’s murder, and leftists demanded that the government “defund the police.”
Chauvin was stabbed in the back 22 times in November 2023 when he was a prisoner in the Tucson jail; he had already appealed his case to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
