Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd, was stabbed and seriously injured by another inmate Friday at a federal prison in Arizona, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
The attack took place at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, a medium-security prison plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages. The person was not authorized to publicly discuss the details of the attack and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an inmate was attacked at FCI Tucson around 12:30 p.m. local time on Friday. In a statement, the agency said responding staff contained the incident and performed “life-saving measures” before the inmate, who was not named, was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation.
No employees were injured and the FBI was notified, the Bureau of Prisons said. Visits to the facility, which houses approximately 380 prisoners, have been suspended.
Messages seeking comment were left with Chauvin’s attorneys and the FBI.
Chauvin’s stabbing is the second high-profile attack on a federal inmate in the past five months. In July, disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed by a fellow inmate in a federal prison in Florida.
It is also the second major incident at Tucson’s federal prison in just over a year. In November 2022, an inmate at the facility’s low-security prison camp pulled out a gun and tried to shoot a visitor in the head. The weapon, which the prisoner should not have had, misfired and no one was injured.
Chauvin, 47, was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security state prison in Minnesota in August 2022 to simultaneously serve a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22.5-year state sentence for manslaughter.
Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, had argued for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, expecting him to be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was kept in solitary confinement “largely for his own protection,” Nelson wrote in court papers last year.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his murder conviction. In addition, Chauvin is attempting to overturn his federal guilty plea, claiming new evidence shows he did not cause Floyd’s death.
Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee into his neck for 9½ minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd was suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.
Bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries: “I can’t breathe.” His death sparked protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.
Three other former officers who were at the scene received lesser state and federal sentences for their roles in Floyd’s death.
Chauvin’s stabbing comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years following the 2019 prison suicide of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein. It’s another example of the agency’s inability to even most prominent prisoners safe after the stabbing of Nassar and the murder of ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski. suicide at a federal medical center in June.
An ongoing AP investigation has uncovered deep, previously unreported deficiencies within the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest law enforcement agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion.
AP reporting has exposed rampant sexual abuse and other criminal behavior by staff, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered response to emergencies including prisoner abuse and suicides.
Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters was brought in last year to reform the crisis-plagued agency. She pledged to change archaic hiring practices and bring new transparency, while emphasizing that the agency’s mission is “to make good neighbors, not good prisoners.”
In her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September, Peters praised steps she had taken to overhaul problematic prisons and strengthen internal affairs investigations. This month, she told a House Judiciary subcommittee that hiring had improved and the number of new hires was outpacing retirements and other departures.
But Peters has also irritated lawmakers who said she was reneging on her promise to be frank and open with them. In September, senators blasted her for forcing them to wait more than a year for answers to written questions and for claiming she could not answer basic questions about how the agencies operate, such as how many correctional officers are employed .
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Associated Press writers Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Michael Balsamo in New York contributed to this report.
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