White police officer Chauvin, accused of killing African-American Floyd, was stabbed in prison

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing black man George Floyd, was reportedly stabbed to death by another inmate and seriously injured at a federal prison in Arizona, a new report from the Associated Press (AP) reported, citing an anonymous source.

According to The Guardian, the attack reportedly took place on Friday at the Tucson Federal Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staff shortages.

The source of the information was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack and spoke on condition of anonymity, the AP said.

The New York Times also reported on the incident, citing two people with knowledge of the situation.

The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an inmate was attacked at FCI Tucson around 12:30 pm local time on Friday, the AP reported.

The agency said in a statement that officers who responded to the incident contained it and took “life-saving measures” before the inmate, whom it did not name, 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 about 380 inmates, have been suspended.

This incident, as noted by The Guardian, was the second high-profile attack on a federal prisoner in the past five months. In July, disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed by an inmate at a federal prison in Florida.

It is also the second major incident at the Tucson federal prison in just over a year. In November 2022, an inmate at the facility’s maximum security prison camp pulled out a gun and tried to shoot a visitor in the head. The weapon, which the prisoner was not supposed to have, misfired and no one was injured.

As The Guardian recalls, Derek Chauvin, 47, was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison in August 2022 to concurrently serve a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22-and-a-half-year state sentence for second-degree murder. .

Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson, argued for keeping him away from the general population and other prisoners, anticipating that he would become a target of violence. In Minnesota, Chauvin was kept in solitary confinement “primarily 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. Separately, Chauvin is seeking to overturn his federal guilty plea, arguing that new evidence shows he did not cause Floyd’s death.

George Floyd, a black man, died on May 25, 2020, after white police officer Chauvin pressed his knee on his neck for 9 1/2 minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd was suspected of trying to pay with a counterfeit $20 bill.

A bystander’s video captured Floyd’s fading screams of “I can’t breathe.” His death sparked protests around the world, some of which turned violent, and forced the nation’s reckoning with police brutality and racism.

Three other former officers at the scene received lesser state and federal sentences for their roles in Floyd’s death.