An inmate member has been charged with attempted murder in the stabbing of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd. John Turscak, 52, stabbed Chauvin 22 times in the law library at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Tucson, Arizona, using an improvised knife, according to federal prosecutors.

Turscak told correctional officers that he would have killed Chauvin had they not responded so quickly, the prosecutors said. In his statement to FBI agents, Turscak revealed that he had been contemplating assaulting Chauvin for about a month due to Chauvin's status as a high-profile inmate, but he denied any intention to kill him.

The attack occurred on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, with Turscak intending to symbolically connect it to the Black Lives Matter movement and the "Black Hand" symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia gang, as per the prosecutors' account.

Despite Turscak's situation of not having a listed attorney in court records, he continues to remain in custody, representing himself in numerous court matters from prison.

Chauvin, currently 47 years old, was transferred to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison in August 2022. He is concurrently serving a 21-year federal sentence for violating George Floyd's civil rights and a 22½-year state sentence for second-degree murder.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin's attorney, had previously advocated for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, foreseeing potential threats. In Minnesota, Chauvin spent most of his time in solitary confinement for his own protection, according to court papers filed by Nelson last year.

The murder of George Floyd, a black man, took place on May 25, 2020, when Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on Floyd's neck for 9½ minutes on a street outside a convenience store. A bystander captured Floyd's distressing final moments on video, in which he repeatedly expressed his inability to breathe. This tragic event ignited global protests, some of which escalated into violence, and triggered a national confrontation with issues of police brutality and systemic racism.