Derek Chauvin, the ex-police officer convicted in the death of George Floyd, was stabbed 22 times by a former gang leader while in prison.
According to court documents, it is alleged that the former gang member John Turscak used an improvised blade to stab Chauvin 22 times on November 24 inside a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
Chauvin survived the attack after prison officers caught the wind of the attack and stabilized him.
Turscak, a former member of a Mexican Mafia gang, allegedly targeted Chauvin in the prison’s law library at lunchtime.
Preliminary reports indicated that he had told some members that he had been considering killing Chauvin for about a month because of his status as a high-profile inmate.
He told correctional officers he would have killed Chauvin had they not reacted quickly, but later denied to FBI agents he had wanted to take the former officer’s life, according to court papers.
Turscak, 52, told FBI agents he attacked Chauvin on Black Friday – as the day after US Thanksgiving is known – as a symbolic connection to Black Lives Matter and the Black Hand symbol linked with the Mexican Mafia, according to prosecutors.
According to the Bureau of Prisons inmate database, Turscak is white. An article in the Los Angeles Times says he was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in 2001 after admitting to carrying out crimes while working as an undercover FBI informant.
Black Lives Matter led nationwide racial justice rallies in the aftermath of the May 2020 killing of Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Chauvin, a white Minneapolis policeman.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office prosecuted Chauvin, said in the aftermath of the stabbing that he was “sad” to learn of the attack.
He is serving multiple sentences for Floyd’s death, which triggered nationwide protests and rioting.
