Former officer who killed George Floyd transferred to Texas jail after attack | George Floyd

Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who sparked a summer of racial justice protests in 2020 when he killed George Floyd on a Minneapolis street, has been transferred to a Texas prison after being stabbed in another prison nine months ago.

Chauvin, 48, was convicted in 2021 of killing Floyd, 46, and was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for second-degree murder. He was later given an additional 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights.

On November 24 of last year, Chauvin was critically injured while behind bars at the medium-security federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, when a former gang leader and former FBI informant stabbed him 22 times with a makeshift knife.

The attacker, John Turscak, later said he chose to attack on the day after Thanksgiving, commonly known as Black Friday (as it marks the start of the seasonal retail shopping boom), because it was symbolic of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Mexican Mafia’s Black Hand symbol. Turscak told prison guards he would have killed Chauvin if they hadn’t acted so quickly.

The federal Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Chauvin is now being held at a low-security prison in Big Spring, Texas. Chauvin is appealing to have his federal guilty plea thrown out, arguing that new evidence shows he did not cause Floyd’s death.

In addition, Thomas Lane, another former Minneapolis police officer, has been released from a federal prison in Colorado. He held Floyd’s legs as he struggled to breathe while Chauvin pinned him by the neck. He had been serving a three-year sentence for aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

Lane, 41, admitted that he intentionally helped restrain Floyd in a manner that he knew created an unreasonable risk of death. He also said he heard Floyd say he couldn’t breathe and knew Floyd had become still, had no pulse and appeared to have lost consciousness.

Lane is the first of the four officers convicted in connection with Floyd’s killing to be released from prison. J Alexander Kueng, who knelt on Floyd’s back, and Tou Thao, who held bystanders back during the 9 1/2 minutes Floyd was pinned facedown in the street, are expected to be released next year.