Derek Chauvin, Officer Convicted for George Floyd Killing, Stabbed in Prison: Official

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin appears via Zoom from a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., on March 17, 2023. Minnesota Judicial Branch via AP

The former police officer who was convicted of killing George Floyd was stabbed in prison, according to the state’s top law enforcement official.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told media outlets that he was informed that Derek Chauvin was stabbed.

Mr. Ellison, a Democrat who prosecuted Mr. Chauvin, said the former police officer was in stable condition.

“I am sad to hear that Derek Chauvin was the target of violence,” Mr. Ellison said. “He was duly convicted of his crimes and, like any incarcerated individual, he should be able to serve his sentence without fear of retaliation or violence.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that an inmate was assaulted at the Federal Correction Institute Tucson in Arizona at roughly 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 24.

Workers “initiated life-saving measures” for the inmate, who was rushed to a local hospital for treatment, according to the bureau.

Workers “isolated and contained the incident and at no time was the public in danger,” it stated.

No workers were injured, according to the bureau. The FBI was notified.

Details about the perpetrator or perpetrators weren’t made public.

A bureau spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email, “For privacy and safety reasons, we are not providing the name of the victim or their medical status.”

One of the lawyers who represented Mr. Chauvin told The Epoch Times in an email: “Everything I’m hearing is from the media. Neither I nor his parents have received responses from our repeated attempts to contact the prison.”

The Tucson prison is a medium-security federal facility.

Mr. Chauvin, 47, was moved to the prison in 2022 from a maximum-security prison near Minneapolis.

He was convicted on the state level of murder and manslaughter in the May 25, 2020, death of Mr. Floyd. He was a Minneapolis police officer when he detained Mr. Floyd, placing a knee on or near his neck.

Mr. Chauvin also pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Mr. Floyd’s civil rights.

His attorneys have said that he could become a target if mixed into the general prison population after he initially spent most of his time in prison in solitary confinement.

That arrangement was “largely for his own protection, because of his former profession as a police officer and the highly-charged circumstances surrounding his offense and conviction,” one attorney wrote in a previous filing.

“Regardless of his ultimate designation, he may never be placed in a general population situation due to his status as a former police officer and the intense publicity surrounding his case,” the attorney wrote.

He pointed to a Chicago Tribune piece about a different former white officer who killed a black man. Several people in the article were quoted as saying the former officer likely would remain outside of the general population.

“Cops almost invariably cannot make it in that situation,” Cameron Lindsay, a former federal prison warden, said, noting that authorities “would take a ridiculous, reckless chance if they put this individual in general population.”

“To put a convicted police officer in the general population is to sign their death warrant,” said Miles Brissette, a lawyer representing yet another former officer.

The stabbing came shortly after the premiere of a documentary examining the death of Mr. Floyd, Mr. Chauvin’s trial, and other related moments. The documentary noted that while the cause of death was determined by a medical examiner to be “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression,“ Mr. Floyd had what was described by the county examiner as a ”fatal level of fentanyl” in his system.

It also came after the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Chauvin’s request to reconsider his second-degree murder conviction.

The nation’s top court didn’t explain its decision.