Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd during a 2020 arrest, was stabbed at a federal prison in Arizona on Friday, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. No details were immediately available on his condition, but one of the people with knowledge of the incident said that Mr. Chauvin, 47, survived the attack. The stabbing was the latest in a series of high-profile security breakdowns in federal prisons, which have struggled for years with safety and staffing issues.
Mr. Chauvin has been 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 Mr. Floyd. He had been an officer with the Minneapolis Police Department for more than 19 years before Mr. Floyd's death. In May 2020, Mr. Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Mr. Floyd, who was Black, for nine and a half minutes as Mr. Floyd lay handcuffed, face down, on a South Minneapolis street corner. Mr. Chauvin was arresting Mr. Floyd on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store.
The killing of Mr. Floyd, 46, a security guard and former rapper, was captured on video and widely seen. The death set off protests nationwide against police violence and racism. Three other officers who were at the scene where Mr. Floyd was killed were also later convicted of violating Mr. Floyd's rights. In a state court in 2021, Mr. Chauvin was convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison. He was also sentenced to 21 years in federal prison in a separate federal civil rights case in which he pleaded guilty, severely limiting his right to challenge the sentence.
[
add
]
[
|
|
...
]