Elerson G. Smith has driven past Cup Foods on East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis many, many times in his life.
His childhood home is five minutes from the Third Precinct in Minneapolis.
The death of George Floyd in police custody May 25 and the subsequent civil unrest across the nation — with Smith’s Minneapolis neighborhood at its epicenter — is fresh on the mind of Northern Iowa’s preseason all-American defensive end.
“Initially when I saw the video of George Floyd being murdered I was upset,” Smith said. “It hurt a lot it had happened just within my neighborhood.