Derek Chauvin was sentenced to more than twenty years in prison for the murder of George Floyd. POOL / REUTERS
The Department of Corrections confirmed that an inmate was assaulted Friday at the Tucson Correctional Center, Arizona, without confirming his identity.
According to several American media, including New York Times (NYT) and Associated Press, Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was sentenced to more than twenty years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, was stabbed by another inmate and seriously injured Friday, November 24 in a prison of Arizona, in the southwest of the United States. Derek Chauvin “was stabbed Friday at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, according to two people familiar with the matter”writes the American daily.
The prison service confirmed that an inmate was attacked around 12:30 p.m. on Friday. According to her, the prisoner, whom she did not name, was taken to hospital after receiving first aid on site from staff. She did not give details of her state of health. She specifies in her press release that the FBI, the Federal police, has been informed of the incident. American federal prison authorities sent a statement to AFP confirming a “assault” without specifying the name of the victim.
An appeal rejected last week
The murder of George Floyd, and the images of his slow agony under the knee of Derek Chauvin, provoked racial riots across the United States, which gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement. On May 25, 2020, the white police officer, a seasoned police officer from Minneapolis (north), remained kneeling on the neck of the black forty-year-old for almost ten minutes, indifferent to the interventions of shocked passers-by and the groans of his victim. Two other police officers helped hold him down.
The scene, filmed and posted online, sparked huge protests against racism and police violence across the United States and beyond. Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder by the Minnesota state courts following a closely watched trial in 2021 and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison. The United States Supreme Court last week rejected Derek Chauvin’s appeal against this conviction. Derek Chauvin had also pleaded guilty to “civil rights violations” of George Floyd before a federal judge and received another sentence in 2022, 21 years in prison.