Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer, during his trial for the murder of George Floyd.POOL (Pool via Portal)
Derek Chauvin, the former police officer serving a 22.5-year sentence for the killing of George Floyd, was stabbed to death this Friday in a medium-security federal prison in Tucson, Arizona. The Minneapolis police officer suffered multiple serious injuries after being attacked by another inmate, the Associated Press reports. According to the authority, rescue workers took improvised measures to save the 47-year-old inmate’s life before transporting him to a hospital. According to ABC, he is in stable condition and is expected to survive the incident.
The name of Chauvin’s attacker has not been released by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. They admitted in a brief statement that an inmate, whom they did not identify, was attacked around 12:30 p.m. this Friday at the Federal Correctional Institution of Tucson, 10 miles southeast of the Arizona city. “Staff have isolated and contained the incident. “At no time was there any danger to the public,” the federal authorities said in a statement. Prison visits have been suspended for the time being. The FBI is investigating the incidents.
It is not the first mishap in the prison where Chauvin is serving his sentence. These are due to several security deficiencies and not having the required number of guards. Last November, an inmate in the medium-security area took a gun and threatened to kill a visitor. The man fired the gun, but it didn’t work and no one was injured.
Chauvin arrived in Tucson in August 2022. He came from a maximum security prison in Minnesota, where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement in a nine-square-meter cell for his own safety. His move to the West was made so that conditions would be less harsh for him. The federal prison in Arizona has 266 inmates divided into maximum and medium security systems.
Chauvin is serving two prison sentences concurrently in Arizona. A 21-year-old federal woman for violating George Floyd’s civil rights and another state conviction for second-degree murder for the man’s death on May 25, 2020. The entire world witnessed the excessive brutality of Chauvin, a police officer. A white officer who Kneeling for nine and a half minutes on the neck of Floyd, who was black and suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill. The man said he couldn’t breathe at least 25 times. The killing, captured on video by a passing woman, sparked months of protests in various parts of the world and heightened racial tensions in the Donald Trump era.
Prison system experts believed Chauvin would be safer in federal prison. Several prosecutors know that prisons are dangerous places for former police officers. Even in state facilities, the risks were greater because of the nature of the inmates behind bars. Many of them belong to gangs and criminal groups. However, one of his lawyers, Eric Nelson, had asked authorities not to place Chauvin in the general population for fear he would become a target of an attack. The former police officer received the harshest punishment. Three other Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd’s arrest and killing received lesser sentences.
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This is the second incident at a federal prison in the last six months. Larry Nassar, the doctor who abused hundreds of gymnasts, was stabbed 10 times in the back and chest during an altercation with another inmate at a Florida prison. Nassar was sentenced to 175 years in prison. A month earlier, Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, also committed suicide at a federal facility in North Carolina. Guard negligence led to one of America’s most famous prisoners dying by his own hands at the age of 81.
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