An inmate stabbed Derek Chauvin 22 times at a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona said in announcing attempted murder charges. John Turscak, 52, who is accused of stabbing Chauvin with an improvised knife on Nov. 24, told investigators that he had been thinking about attacking Chauvin for a month because Chauvin — who is serving more than 20 years in prison for murdering George Floyd — is a high-profile inmate, reports the New York Times. Turscak attacked Chauvin inside the law library/ Officers used pepper spray to subdue Turscak, who told officers that he would have killed Chauvin “had they not responded so quickly." Turscak said he been planning the assault for about a month.
Turscak said the date of stabbing, the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday, was “symbolic with the Black Lives Matter movement and the ‘Black Hand’ symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia criminal organization,” In 2001, a man with the same name as Turscak was sentenced in Los Angeles federal court to 30 years in prison. The man was a former Mexican Mafia member and had been convicted of crimes he committed while he was an FBI informant.