Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been stabbed by another inmate and seriously injured at the Arizona prison where he is serving a 22-year sentence for murdering George Floyd.
Chauvin, 47, was attacked on Friday, AP reported, at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson – a medium-security prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages.
The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an incarcerated person was assaulted at FCI Tucson at around 12:30pm local time Friday.
In a statement, the agency said responding employees contained the incident and performed ‘life-saving measures’ before the inmate, who it did not name, was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation.
Chauvin was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison 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 second-degree murder.
Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he’d be a target.
In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement ‘largely for his own protection,’ Nelson wrote in court papers last year.
Derek Chauvin, 47, was stabbed and seriously injured in prison in Arizona on Friday. He needed ‘life saving’ attention from prison staff. Chauvin is pictured on March 17 via Zoom
Ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22- and-a-half-years in prison for the murder of Floyd after pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his murder conviction.
Separately, Chauvin is making a long-shot bid to overturn his federal guilty plea, claiming new evidence shows he didn’t cause Floyd’s death.
No employees were injured in Friday’s attack, and the FBI was notified, the Bureau of Prisons said.
Visiting at the facility, which has about 380 inmates, has been suspended.
Chauvin’s stabbing is the second high-profile attack on a federal prisoner in the last five months.
In July, disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed by a fellow inmate at a federal penitentiary in Florida.
It is also the second major incident at the Tucson federal prison in a little over a year.
In November 2022, an inmate at the facility’s low-security prison camp pulled out a gun and attempted to shoot a visitor in the head. The weapon, which the inmate shouldn’t have had, misfired and no one was hurt.
Floyd, who was black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee on his neck for nine and a half minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd was suspected of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.
George Floyd’s May 2020 death convulsed the United States and sparked protests against police brutality worldwide
Bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of ‘I can’t breathe.’
His death touched off 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 faced increased scrutiny in recent years following wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s jail suicide in 2019.
It’s another example of the agency’s inability to keep even its highest profile prisoners safe after Nassar’s stabbing and ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski’s suicide at a federal medical center in June.