From Le Figaro with AFP
Published 6 hours ago, updated 4 hours ago
Former police officer Derek Chauvin was stabbed 22 times in the prison where he is serving his sentence. POOL / Portal
The inmate who stabbed police officer Derek Chauvin to death at a federal prison last week was charged with attempted murder on Friday, December 1. He had stabbed a total of 22 times the man who had been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, an African American whom he was trying to arrest for a minor crime. The latter’s death in May 2020, after suffocating for minutes under Derek Chauvin’s knee, had sparked a major anti-racist movement in the United States and beyond American borders.
Derek Chauvin, a white police officer and later a veteran police officer in Minneapolis (North), knelt on the neck of 46-year-old George Floyd for almost ten minutes, remaining indifferent to the interventions of shocked passers-by and the pleas of the forty-year-old. Derek Chauvin, 47, serving a 22.5-year sentence, was attacked in a federal prison library in Tucson, Arizona, on November 24, 2023. He survived his injuries.
Symbolically stabbed to death on “Black Friday”.
One of his fellow inmates, John Turscak, 52, is accused of attacking him with a homemade knife. The man told investigators that he knowingly chose the date of the attack, the day of “Black Friday” (literally: Black Friday), known for its commercial discounts, in reference to the anti-racist movement “Black Lives Matter”, always a dish source. “Mr. Turscak told prison officials that he would have killed (Mr. Chauvin) if they had not responded so quickly,” a judicial source said in a document.
Federal prosecutors in Tucson said they have charged John Turscack on multiple counts, including attempted murder, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and assault causing great bodily harm. The man is also accused of stabbing another inmate more than 20 times, again with a knife. Although no press release or complaint mentions Mr. Chauvin’s full name, an official source confirmed to AFP that the victim was indeed the former Minneapolis police officer. No information was provided about his current health status.