A US prisoner has been charged with attempted murder after stabbing Derek Chauvin, the ex-police officer convicted in the death of George Floyd.
Prosecutors said ex-gang member John Turscak used an improvised blade to knife Chauvin 22 times on 24 November at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
Chauvin survived the attack and was said to be in a stable condition.
He is serving multiple sentences for Floyd’s death, which triggered nationwide protests and rioting.
Turscak, a former member of a Mexican Mafia gang, allegedly targeted Chauvin in the prison’s law library at lunchtime. He later said that he had been considering killing Chauvin for about a month because of his status as a high-profile inmate.
He told correctional officers he would have killed Chauvin had they not reacted quickly, but later denied to FBI agents he had wanted to take the former officer’s life, according to court papers.
Turscak, 52, told FBI agents he attacked Chauvin on Black Friday – as the day after US Thanksgiving is known – as a symbolic connection to Black Lives Matter and the Black Hand symbol linked with the Mexican Mafia, according to prosecutors.
According to the Bureau of Prisons inmate database, Turscak was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in 2001 after admitting to carrying out crimes while working as an undercover FBI informant.
Black Lives Matter led nationwide racial justice rallies in the aftermath of the May 2020 killing of Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Chauvin, a white Minneapolis policeman.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office prosecuted Chauvin, said in the aftermath of the stabbing that he was “sad” to learn of the attack.
“He was duly convicted of his crimes and, like any incarcerated individual, he should be able to serve his sentence without fear of retaliation or violence,” Mr Ellison said in a statement from his office.
