Youa Vang Lee was at her home in Minneapolis when her son showed her the video of George Floyd dying under a police officer's knee. Lee, a 59-year-old Laotian immigrant who assembles medical supplies at a factory, heard Floyd cry out for his mother. It triggered a deep and familiar pain. "Fong was probably feeling the same way, too," she said in Hmong, her eyes filling with tears. "He was probably asking for me, too." In 2006, Lee's 19-year-old son Fong - who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand - was shot eight times by Minneapolis police officer Jason Andersen. The officer remains on the force to this day, a fact that the Lees were not aware of until told by the BBC. The officer was terminated twice, but has apparently since been rehired. Although security footage showed Lee was running away at the time, Andersen claimed the teenager had a gun. A grand jury declined to indict him and the police department ruled the shooting justified. The family sued in civil court claiming excessive force and brought evidence the gun found beside Fong's body was planted. An all-white jury found against them. Youa hadn't spoken publicly about her son in over a decade, not since the family came to the end of their legal road with nothing to show for it. But after Lee saw Floyd's death, she began asking if anyone knew of marches she could attend. "I have to be there," she said. Although no one directly discouraged her, some members of her community questioned the decision. The Twin Cities, as Minneapolis and St Paul are known, are home to the largest urban population of Hmong in the US, many of whom came to the area as refugees in the 1980s and 90s. The Hmong are an ethnic group from South-East Asia, with their own language, mainly drawn from southern China, Vietnam and Laos. Within that community, there has been heated debate about how to respond to the Black Lives Matter and Justice for George Floyd movements, which are demanding systemic change to policing. For Youa Lee, however, there was no debate. She wanted to get involved for one reason - when Fong died in 2006, the first people to show up in support of her family came from the black activist community. "They were the loudest voices for us," recalled Shoua Lee, Fong's older sister. "Even before we asked for help from other communities, they had come to us and offered their help." Although four officers have been charged with the murder of George Floyd on 25 May, the viral video of the incident only captures two of them - former officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, and former officer Tou Thao, who kept the crowd back, rather than going to Floyd's aid. "Don't do drugs, guys," Thao said at one point to distressed onlookers. Thao, an 11-year veteran of the department, has been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. He is also Hmong. As soon as Boonmee Yang, a fourth-grade public school teacher in St Paul, saw the video, he knew things were going to get complicated in the Hmong community.