Derek Chauvin, a former police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd, was reportedly seriously injured after being stabbed by another inmate at a federal prison in Arizona on Friday, sources told the Associated Press and other news outlets.
Chauvin is serving two sentences for murdering Floyd and violating his civil rights after being caught on camera in 2020 kneeling on the handcuffed man’s neck for more than nine minutes as Floyd repeated that he couldn’t breathe.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
What do we know about the stabbing in Derek Chauvin’s prison?
The AP reported, according to an anonymous source, that Chauvin was stabbed and seriously injured on Friday afternoon inside FCI Tucson, a medium security federal correctional institution. Unnamed sources have since reported the same to other news outlets including ABC News and NBC News.
In a statement shared with the AP and the New York Times, the Bureau of Prisons confirmed an incarcerated person, who they did not identify, was assaulted around 12:30 p.m. local time and hospitalized after staff performed “life-saving measures.”
Visiting at the facility has been suspended, the prison’s website said on Saturday.
TIME reached out by email to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and by phone to the public information officer at FCI Tucson early Saturday for information.
Who is Derek Chauvin?
Chauvin is a white former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on the neck of Floyd, a Black city resident who had been accused of using a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a convenience store, before Floyd died.
The video sparked the largest racial justice protests across the country since the Civil Rights Movement, criticizing racially disproportionate fatal police shootings of Black Americans and seeking racial justice in all areas of society, inspiring similar actions around the world.
Chauvin and three other police officers who watched the incident—Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao—were fired the next day. Three days after that, Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, which was later revised to second-degree murder.
In 2021, Chauvin was convicted of murder and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. Chauvin also pled guilty to violating Floyd’s civil rights and in 2022, was sentenced to a 21-year federal sentence.
Chauvin arrived at FCI Tucson in August 2022 from a Minnesota state prison, where he was largely held in solitary confinement for his own protection, his attorney wrote in court filings last year, the AP reported.
Chauvin has appealed his conviction on the grounds that the jury was biased and based on the judge’s past rulings. A Minnesota appellate court upheld his conviction and rejected his right to a new trial in April. The U.S. Supreme Court also declined on Nov. 20 to hear his appeal, Reuters reported.
His fellow former officers were sentenced to between 2.5 and 3.5 years in prison for depriving Floyd his right to medical care, with two additionally convicted of failing to intervene to stop Chauvin.
Leave a comment
