Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is expected to survive after he was stabbed by another inmate and seriously injured in an Arizona prison where he is serving a 22-year sentence for the killing of George Floyd.
Chauvin, 47, was attacked with a knife near police on Friday Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson – a medium security prison plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages.
“We have heard that he is expected to survive,” said Brian Evans, spokesman for the Minnesota attorney general’s office.
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.
An official said his injuries were not life-threatening and a lawyer for him said Saturday that his legal team was still trying to get details about the incident.
Chauvin 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-and-a-half-year state sentence for manslaughter.
Derek Chauvin, 47, was stabbed and seriously injured in an Arizona prison on Friday. He needed ‘life-saving’ attention from prison staff. Chauvin will be photographed via Zoom on March 17
Ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for Floyd’s murder after pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison issued a statement saying he was “saddened” to learn Chauvin was attacked.
“I am saddened to hear that Derek Chauvin was the target of violence. “He has been rightly convicted for his crimes and, like any inmate, he should be able to serve his sentence without fear of retaliation or violence,” he said in a statement.
Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, said Saturday that he wouldn’t wish what happened to Chauvin on anyone and that he felt numb when he first heard the news.
“I’m not going to spend my energy on anything that happens within those four walls – because my energy was focused on getting him inside those four walls,” he said.
“Whatever happens within those four walls, I don’t really have any feelings about it.”
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.
The Bureau of Prisons said no Tucson prison employees were injured in the attack and that the FBI had been notified.
Visits to the facility, which houses approximately 380 prisoners, have been suspended.
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.
Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee into his neck for nine and a half minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd was suspected of passing a counterfeit $20. . account.
The death of George Floyd in May 2020 roiled the United States and sparked protests against police brutality worldwide
Bystander video captured Floyd’s trailing cry of “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 suicide of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s another example of the agency’s inability to keep even its most prominent detainees safe after Nassar’s stabbing and the suicide of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski at a federal medical center in June.