Black birdwatcher who Amy Cooper called 911 on for 'threatening her life' when he asked her to leash her dog says the incident 'pulled the pin on the race grenade' that exploded with George Floyd's death

Christian Cooper, the black man who filmed a disturbing confrontation with white dog walker Amy Cooper in Central Park last month, says the incident ‘pulled the pin on the race grenade’ that later exploded nationwide following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Harvard graduate Christian, 57, had been bird watching in an area of the park known as The Ramble over the Memorial Day weekend when he encountered Amy Cooper walking her dog unleashed, against park rules.

After pointing out to Cooper that dogs must be leashed in area at all times to protect wildlife habitats, she quickly became irate, with the 41-year-old hysterically dialing 911, wailing into her cell phone that ‘an African American man is threatening my life’.

Speaking to Gail King as part of CBS’ upcoming special on the state of policing in the US on Tuesday, Christian said his decision to start filming Cooper had ‘nothing to do with race’ at first, but what transpired would go on to fuel a national conversation about the centuries-long history of racial bias in America.

‘She basically pulled the pin on the race grenade and tried to lob it at me,’ Christian told the network. ‘She was going to tap into a deep, deep, dark vein of racism and racial bias that runs through this country and has done for centuries.’

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Christian Cooper, the black man who filmed a disturbing confrontation with white dog walker Amy Cooper in Central Park last month, says the incident ‘pulled the pin on the race grenade’ which would go on to explode 24 hours later after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis

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Harvard graduate Christian, 57, had been bird watching in an area of the park known as The Ramble over the Memorial Day weekend when he encountered Amy Cooper walking her dog unleashed, against park rules 

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In the hours that followed the video’s emergence, outrage over the incident – commonly referred to as 'Central Park Karen' – rippled out nationwide.

The following day, video footage taken by a bystander in Minneapolis surfaced on social media showing white officer Derek Chauvin kneeling down on the neck of George Floyd for eight minutes and 46 seconds before he later died.

The unarmed and handcuffed 46-year-old lay face down on a Minneapolis street, gasping for air and groaning for help, before falling deathly silent.

The case was reminiscent of the 2014 killing of another African American, Eric Garner, who died after being placed by police in a chokehold while under arrest in New York City.

The dying words of both men, 'I can’t breathe,' have since become a rallying cry in a global outpouring of rage, drawing crowds by the thousands to the streets demanding justice and reforms to US policing, despite health hazards from the coronavirus pandemic.

Christian’s encounter with Amy Cooper became an integral part of the nationwide unrest, along with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.

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Speaking to Gail King as part of CBS’ upcoming special on the state of policing in the US on Tuesday, Christian said his decision to start filming Cooper had ‘nothing to do with race’ at first, but what transpired would go on to fuel a national conversation about the centuries-long history of racial bias in America

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The preliminary results of an autopsy on George Floyd have found he died from a combination of heart disease and potential intoxicants in his system that were exacerbated by the restraint placed on him by police officers not by strangulation or asphyxiation

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Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white cop who has since been arrested, was seen in footage kneeling on Floyd's neck for eight minutes as the victim repeatedly said he could not breathe (incident pictured)

The birdwatcher would later accept Cooper’s publicly released apology to him, insisting she ‘isn’t a racist’ and suffered an untimely lapse in judgement, but urged the public to look at the bigger picture of racism that the encounter displayed.

‘I do accept her apology,’ Christian told The View late last month. ‘I think it’s a first step. I think she’s gotta do some reflection on what happened.

‘It was just a conflict between a birder and a dog walker, and then she took it to a very dark place. I think she’s gotta sort of examine why and how that happened.’

Christian said whether Cooper reacted with malice or not doesn’t really matter, rather the ‘‘underlying current of racism and racial perceptions" she tapped into within a snap-second.

‘That’s what we really have to address; not the specifics of her, but why are we still plagued with that and how do we fix it.’

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‘She basically pulled the pin on the race grenade and tried to lob it at me,’ Christian told the network. ‘She was going to tap into a deep, deep, dark vein of racism and racial bias that runs through this country and has done for centuries'

Christian Cooper's sister, Melody Cooper, a writer for HBO who also shared the video to social media, said that when she saw the footage, she thought ‘It’s personal’.

‘I just imagined what happened to Mike Brown or George Floyd happening to him, and I wanted to make sure no other black person would have to go through that kind of weaponization of racism from her,’ she said.

‘If the cops showed up, they wouldn’t have seen his resume or known his job,’ she said of her high-flying brother, who now works as a biomedical editor for Health Science Communications. ‘This kind of racism can kill people. It could’ve killed my brother.’