The director of athletics at the University of New Orleans said Newton, Massachusetts police stopped him and his wife with guns drawn just five days before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis.

According to Tim Duncan, he and his wife Lisa were stopped by police while they were walking one block from their home.

Duncan started in his position at the University of New Orleans last year, after serving as the deputy athletic director for external affairs at Northeastern University. He shared his account in a video dated June 1, posted on the University of New Orleans' athletic department's website.

In the video, Duncan said he was stopped because he "fit a profile."

Duncan said he is disappointed in himself because he had begun to normalize these sort of events, though they are not OK.

"It's not OK that just because I'm a tall black man walking one block from his house that I'm pulled over and say I fit a profile of a murder suspect just because he was tall," he said in the video.

According to a statement from Newton Police, the department began surveillance of an address in Newton on May 18, after a report from the Boston Police Department that a suspect in a fatal shooting may have had a tie to a person living there.

While monitoring the home, they saw someone they say fit the suspect's physical description, according to the statement.

On May 20, Newton Police approached Duncan as he walked near the house they were watching. They asked for his ID and he told them he did not feel safe putting his hand down to get his wallet, so a Newton police officer got his wallet, checked his ID and verified Duncan was not the suspect.

The suspect police were looking for was taken into custody on a warrant by Boston Police in Newton the next day.

In the video, Duncan said he understands that police have to do their job, but that what happened to him was "uncalled for."

"And it's uncalled for that George Floyd had a knee on his neck for eight minutes and, I think, 46 seconds," he said. "It's uncalled for that Ahmaud [Arbery] was running through a neighborhood ... and someone hunted him down and killed him. That's not OK. This stuff has happened way too much. I'm pissed. I'm outraged."

In an interview with WGBH News, Duncan said his family stayed in Newton after he took the job in New Orleans because he has a son who was a senior at Newton North High School. When police stopped Duncan, his family was in the process of moving out.

"We loved living in a prototypical suburban area with excellent schools. We loved it," he said. "So it's nothing about the town of Newton or the Newton PD that I'm specifically upset, it's just upset with how my situation can happen to any African-American man anywhere, at any time. Even one block over from his home."

Duncan said that this was not the first time that he had been stopped by police with weapons drawn, but it was the first time that it had happened when he was walking in his own neighborhood.

He had started to move on. But then, on May 25, a police officer in Minnesota kept his knee on the neck of George Floyd for nearly nine minutes.

"I didn't connect his death with my situation until a friend told me, 'Tim, that could have been you," Duncan told WGBH News. "And then that just made me sit back and think, 'Damn, you know, that's right, that could have been me.' So that's when I [started] to think about, why have I normalized it over the course of my life?"

Jeff Konya, athletic director at Northeastern, said Duncan was a great colleague, and hearing his account struck a nerve.

"It's just unimaginable that a circumstance like that could involve Tim to begin with," he said. "And it's disheartening knowing that that hits close to home, especially in light of everything else going on in society right now."

As the nation mourns the killings of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others, Duncan said that he wants to use his experience to educate his student athletes.

"I wanted them to get the message that, for the African-American student athletes, you're not alone," he said. "And for our non African-American student athletes, this can happen literally to anyone. Even your athletic director, in a great neighborhood, in the most liberal city, in the most liberal state in the country — this can still happen to him."