An outrageous ‘George Floyd Challenge’ has emerged on social media, with dozens of white teenagers re-enacting George Floyd’s death on Snapchat. Floyd died early last week after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the ground by pressing his knee for several minutes into Floyd’s neck. In a video gone viral, Floyd could be heard pleading that he could not breathe. He later died in hospital. His death has fuelled violent protests across the United States.

The Snapchat images are a shocking satire of Floyd’s tragic death.

The largely male participants can be seen smiling in the photos showing them kneeling down on their friend’s necks. Chardon, Ohio, was the location of the first image to be shared of the so-called challenge on social media, screenshot from Snapchat. The Chardon School District conducted an investigation into the photo but were unable to identify either of the teens in the shot. Chardon Police Chief, Scott Niehus, believes the location of the photo provided in the original post had been deliberately listed incorrectly.

Mail Online, meanwhile, reports two white female high school seniors due to attend the University of Missouri, in the US, were forced to withdraw their enrolments after a video they uploaded triggered fury. In the footage, one girl is kneeling over another, who yells that she cannot breathe as both of them laugh. The video is mockingly captioned, ‘Aw [name] can’t breathe.’ The university, which was shaken by racial protests just five years ago, has opened a civil rights investigation. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, three teenagers due to attend the University of Warwick were arrested on hate crimes charges for sharing images of the same nature. The three males all appear to be laughing in the image, with the picture captioned ‘police brutality’.

There are reports that grown men have also been pictured taking part in the appalling trend, with the images being shared on Twitter.

Umm Muhammed Umar