Inmate stabbed Derek Chauvin 22 times, charged with attempted murder, prosecutors say

A federal inmate was charged Friday with attempted murder in the prison stabbing of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd.

John Turscak stabbed Chauvin 22 times in the law library at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, with an improvised knife, federal prosecutors said. Turscak, 52, told correctional officers he would’ve killed Chauvin had they not responded so quickly, prosecutors said.

Turscak later told FBI agents that he’d been thinking about assaulting Chauvin for about a month because he is a high-profile inmate but denied wanting to kill him, prosecutors said.

Turscak told the agents that he attacked Chauvin on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, as a symbolic connection to the Black Lives Matter movement and the “Black Hand” symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia gang, prosecutors said.

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