An attorney for George Floyd vowed at a memorial service on Thursday to find justice for the African-American man whose harrowing videotaped death while being arrested last week sparked nationwide protests.

Benjamin Crump, who is representing Floyd’s family, said it was “not the coronavirus pandemic that killed George Floyd.”

“It was that other pandemic,” he said. “The pandemic of racism and discrimination that killed George Floyd.”

Crump pledged “to get justice for George Floyd,” who died during a May 25 arrest when a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Members of Floyd’s family, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey were among several hundred people attending the memorial service at North Central University in downtown Minneapolis.

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton is to deliver the eulogy for the 46-year-old Floyd, who is to be buried in his home town of Houston, Texas.

Four police officers have been arrested for their role in Floyd’s death, which has unleashed a wave of protests for racial justice unseen in the US since the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.