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

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

Chauvin, 48, was sentenced in 2021 to 22.5 years in prison for first-degree murder in the killing of Floyd, 46. He later received a separate 21-year sentence in federal court for violating Floyd's civil rights.

On November 24 of last year, Chauvin was critically injured behind bars at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, by a former gang leader and former FBI informant who stabbed him 22 times with an improvised blade.

The attacker, John Turscak, later said he chose the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday (as it marks the start of the seasonal retail shopping boom), to attack because it symbolizes the Black Lives Matter movement and the Mexican Mafia's symbol, the Black Hand. Turscak told correctional officers he would have killed Chauvin if they had not reacted so quickly.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Chauvin is currently being held at a low-security prison in Big Spring, Texas. Chauvin is appealing the dismissal of his guilty plea in federal court, claiming new evidence shows he did not cause Floyd's death.

Separately, another former Minneapolis police officer, Thomas Lane, has been released from federal prison in Colorado after serving a three-year sentence for aiding and abetting manslaughter for holding Floyd's legs as he struggled to breathe while Chauvin held him by the neck.

Lane, 41, admitted that he intentionally helped restrain Floyd in a way he knew posed an unreasonable risk and caused his death. He also said that he heard Floyd say he couldn't breathe and that he knew Floyd was silent, had no pulse and appeared to have lost consciousness.

Lane is the first of the four police officers convicted in Floyd's killing to be released from prison. J. Alexander Kueng, who knelt on Floyd's back, and Tou Thao, who kept bystanders from intervening during the 9.5 minutes Floyd was held facedown in the street, are expected to be released next year.