Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who triggered a summer of racial justice protests when he murdered George Floyd on a Minneapolis street in 2020, has been transferred to a Texas prison after being stabbed at a different facility nine months ago.
Chauvin, 48, was convicted in 2021 of killing Floyd, 46, and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for second degree murder, then later given a separate 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights.
On 24 November last year, Chauvin was badly wounded behind bars by a former gang leader and one-time FBI informant at the medium-security federal correctional institution in Tucson, Arizona, who used an improvised blade to stab him 22 times.
The assailant, John Turscak, later said he chose to attack on the day after Thanksgiving, commonly known as Black Friday (as it marks the start of the seasonal retail shopping boom), because it symbolized the Black Lives Matter movement and the Black Hand symbol of the Mexican mafia. Turscak told correctional officers he would have killed Chauvin had they not responded so quickly.
The federal Bureau of Prisons told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Chauvin is now housed at a low-security prison in Big Spring, Texas. Chauvin is appealing to have his federal guilty plea dismissed, claiming new evidence shows he did not cause Floyd’s death.
Separately, another former Minneapolis officer, Thomas Lane, who held down Floyd’s legs as he struggled to breathe while pinned by the neck by Chauvin, has been released from federal prison in Colorado, after serving a three-year sentence for aiding and abetting manslaughter.
Lane, 41, admitted that he intentionally helped restrain Floyd in a way that he knew created an unreasonable risk and caused his death. He also said that he heard Floyd say he could not breathe and knew Floyd fell silent, had no pulse and appeared to have lost consciousness.
Lane is the first of the four officers convicted in relation to Floyd’s killing to be released from prison. J Alexander Kueng, who knelt on Floyd’s back, and Tou Thao, who kept bystanders from intervening during the 9.5 minutes when Floyd was restrained facedown on the street, are expected to be released next year.
