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,…
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