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New Orleans AD: My wife and I were stopped at gunpoint by police days before George Floyd's death

University of New Orleans athletic director Tim Duncan revealed Tuesday morning that he and his wife were stopped at gunpoint by Newton, Massachusetts, police just days before George Floyd was killed after a now-former Minneapolis police officer had his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.

Duncan, a black man, said they were stopped on May 20 a block from their house while walking to the store by numerous police officers because he fit “a profile.” He hadn’t said anything publicly about what happened until Tuesday morning.

“I’m disappointed in myself over the past few years in my life because I had begun to normalize these situations,” Duncan said. “I remember the talk that my mom and dad had given me about race and police from the time that I was a child.”

Duncan said he felt OK with how things would turn out well for his wife and him because his family had that conversation with him when he was a kid. But he also made it clear that his family’s preparation didn’t excuse what happened in the slightest. He said he was “pissed” and “outraged” and wanted to talk to his school’s athletes before he made a public statement.

“It’s not OK just because I’m a tall black man walking one block from his house that I’m pulled over and say I fit a profile of a murder suspect just because he was tall. And I understand that police have to do their job. Trust me, they do. To roll down on me with guns drawn when I’m walking on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon with my wife is uncalled for. And it’s uncalled for that George Floyd had a knee on his neck for eight minutes and I think 46 seconds.

“It’s uncalled for that Ahmaud [Arbery] was running through a neighborhood — I’m a runner, I run through neighborhoods all the time. Someone hunted him down and killed him. That’s not OK.”

Arbery was killed in February as he was running through a Georgia neighborhood after Gregory and Travis McMichael chased him down because they suspected him of a robbery. The incident was caught on camera. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the handling of Arbery’s case in May and within two days had charged the two white men with felony murder and aggravated assault.

Duncan came to New Orleans in April of 2019 after he served as a deputy AD at Northeastern University in Boston. Before he was at Boston for five years he worked at two Division II schools in Georgia.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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