MINNEAPOLIS– Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd, is expected to be seriously injured after being stabbed by another inmate at a federal prison in Arizona, the Minnesota attorney general’s office said Saturday while denouncing the attack.
The stabbing took place Friday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, a medium-security prison plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages. It was confirmed by a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss the attack and who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
“We have heard that he is expected to survive,” Brian Evans, spokesman for the Minnesota attorney general’s office, told The Associated Press of Chauvin.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed an attack at the prison and said employees performed “life-saving measures” before the inmate was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation. The Bureau of Prisons has not named the victim or provided medical status “for privacy and security reasons.”
Prosecutors who successfully pursued a second-degree murder conviction against Chauvin during a 2021 jury trial expressed dismay that he became the target of violence while in federal custody.
“I am saddened to hear that Derek Chauvin was the target of violence. He was rightly convicted for his crimes and, like any inmate, he should be able to serve his sentence without fear of retaliation or violence,” said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. said in a statement.
The Bureau of Prisons said no Tucson prison employees were injured in the attack and that the FBI had been notified. The facility has approximately 380 inmates.
Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, told The Associated Press on 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’s happening inside those four walls – because my energy was focused on getting him inside those four walls,” Terrence Floyd said. “Whatever happens within those four walls, I don’t really have any feelings about it.”
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.
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.
In November 2022, an inmate at the low-security federal prison camp in Tucson 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.
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.