Friday 26 / April / 2024
Arizona: Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted in the 2020 killing of George Floyd, which had sparked the massive 'Black Lives Matter' protest, was stabbed at a federal prison in Arizona, New York Times reported citing two people familiar with the situation.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an inmate at the Tucson prison was stabbed at 12:30 pm (local time) on Friday, though the agency's statement did not identify Chauvin, 47, by name.
No other inmates or prison staff were injured, and the situation was quickly contained, NYT reported citing people familiar with the situation.
Emergency medical technicians "initiated lifesaving measures" before transporting the inmate to a local hospital "for further treatment and evaluation," bureau officials said in a statement.
No details were immediately available on his condition, but one of the people with knowledge of the incident said that Chauvin survived the attack.
Chauvin was serving a sentence of just over two decades in federal prison after he was convicted of state murder charges and a federal charge of violating the constitutional rights of Floyd. Chauvin's lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
According to New York Times, Chauvin who is white in colour had knelt on Floyd, who is black in colour, for nine and a half minutes in May 2020 as Floyd lay handcuffed, face down, on a South Minneapolis street corner.
The killing of Floyd, 46, a security guard and former rapper, was captured on video by a teenager, and the footage ricocheted around the world while people were isolating amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The killing set off the largest protests of a generation, against police violence and racism, and led to a high-profile, televised trial in which Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder in April 2021.
Three other officers who were at the scene where Floyd was killed were also later convicted of violating Floyd's rights.
Chauvin had sought to appeal his conviction, the Supreme Court had rejected his efforts this week, New York Times reported.
Notably, part of Chauvin's plea deal with prosecutors in his federal case was that he would be allowed to serve his sentence in a federal prison, which is generally considered safer than a state prison.
However, there have been several other high-profile attacks on federal prisoners in recent years, including the stabbing earlier this year of Larry Nassar, who had been convicted of sexually abusing young gymnasts, and the killing in 2018 of James (Whitey) Bulger, the mobster who was murdered in a West Virginia prison.
According to New York Times, the Bureau of Prisons has been grappling with a widespread shortage of corrections officers and has relied on teachers, case managers, counselors, facilities workers and secretaries to fill shifts.
About 21 per cent of the 20,446 positions for corrections officers funded by Congress -- 4,293 guards -- were unfilled in September 2022, according to a report in March 2023 by the Justice Department's inspector general's office.
