SnapBlog

The inmate charged with stabbing former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin 22 times in a federal lockup in Arizona last month said he intended to kill Chauvin, but guards arrived too quickly before he was able to finish the job.

Charging documents identified Chauvin’s assailant as 52-year-old John Turscak, a violent former gang member who authorities say fashioned a makeshift knife to attack the disgraced ex-cop who killed George Floyd in 2020 by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Chauvin, who is 17 months into his federal sentence for killing Floyd, was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he remained in stable condition.

Life-saving measures were administered to save the victim’s life at the medium-security facility that has been plagued in recent years by ongoing security lapses and staffing shortages.

The FBI is continuing to investigate the violent Nov. 24 episode, while the U.S. District Attorney in Tucson will prosecute Turscak in connection with the brutal attack on Chauvin.

A week earlier, Chauvin lay bleeding after he was stabbed multiple times inside the law library of the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, where he is serving a 22-year term for violating Floyd’s civil rights while killing him.

Turscak, his alleged attacker, was in the midst of serving a 30-year sentence for various crimes he committed as a one-time powerful capo in the notorious prison gang known as the Mexican Mafia. 

Founded in the California penal system in the 1950s, the criminal organization has since expanded its enterprise far beyond the walls of correctional facilities, exerting mob-like control over drug trafficking, extortion, racketeering, intimidation tactics and violent crimes, including murders, in the land of the free.

Turscak embraced gang life after he killed a man in Folsom State Prison in 1990 and, eight years later, helped orchestrate the murder of another man.

Before his current incarceration, Turscak had a tough-guy image as he strong-armed other gang members and collected taxes from street-level drug dealers in exchange for mob protection on the outside, court documents state.

Later, Turscak turned on his street associates and became an undercover informant for the FBI. However, the bureau was forced to abandon Turscak as he kept selling drugs and ordering violent crimes during the operation.

Turscak didn’t initially have an attorney in the stabbing of Chauvin, although the inmate has represented himself in previous court proceedings.

Meanwhile, Chauvin’s attorney, Greg Erickson, scolded local media outlets that broke the news last week of Chauvin’s attack before his family members had a chance to be notified. He also complained that Chauvin wasn’t given additional protection due to his status as a high-profile prisoner, alleging jailers “allowed this to happen.”

“The fact that it happened, and he got stabbed 22 times supposedly under their protection is evidence that they weren’t taking the obligation to protect him serious,” Erickson said, adding that he would seek to get Chauvin moved from the facility unless prison officials make serious security upgrades.

It’s unclear whether Chauvin has the legal right to choose a different lockup after his defense attorney, Eric Nelson, previously asked that Chauvin be allowed to serve his term in a Minnesota prison to be closer to his family, but that motion was denied.

Officials at the Tuscon prison suspended all visits after the attack and have not yet explained whether Chauvin and Turscak knew each other or if they had met at the prison before the knifing.

It was unclear whether Turscak intended his alleged attack on Chauvin as retribution for Floyd’s death.

Still, he faces charges of attempted murder, assault with intent to commit murder, assault with a dangerous weapon, and assault resulting in serious bodily injury, potentially adding years, if not decades, to his sentence.

Turscak admitted to the attack as part of a twisted plan to link the would-be killing to Black Friday and somehow symbolically connect Chauvin’s assumed death with the Black Lives Matter movement, according to investigators.

The attack on Chauvin comes as the former officer was seeking to have his conviction thrown out based on an alternative medical theory on Floyd’s cause of death.

However, at the time of the killing, then-Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman argued Floyd’s death was a homicide that was likely caused by the brutal knee restraint applied by Chauvin.

Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020, when then-officer Chauvin, who is white, subdued the 46-year-old Black man by pinning his neck to the ground with his knee after Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store moments earlier.

The episode was filmed by several witnesses who shared the videos on social media, which went viral and sparked months of violent protests around the world while galvanizing the Black Lives Matter movement in America.

The attack on Chauvin happened nearly five months after another high profile federal prisoner — Larry Nassar, the disgraced former sports doctor convicted in 2018 of molesting hundreds of girls and young women, including members of the U.S. women’s national gymnastics team — was stabbed in a Florida prison in July.

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