Federal prosecutors have charged a 52-year-old ex-gang leader in the assault on former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was reportedly stabbed 22 times last week in an Arizona federal prison.
John Turscak, a former member of the Mexican Mafia who served as an FBI informant, is accused of stabbing Chauvin on Nov. 24 in the law library at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Tucson, according to court documents. Chauvin suffered serious injuries but is expected to survive.
Investigators said that Turscak told FBI agents he had been thinking for about a month about attacking Chauvin, identified in court documents as “D.C.,” because he was a high-profile inmate. Chauvin is serving a 21-year federal prison sentence at FCI Tucson for violating George Floyd’s constitutional rights when he killed the Black Minnesota man by kneeling on his neck for at least nine minutes during an arrest in 2020. Chauvin was convicted of Floyd’s murder in state court and sentenced there separately to 22.5 years.
Turscak told officials he put some thought into the timing of his attack on Nov. 24, which was Black Friday this year, according to the allegations.
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“Turscak stated that his attack of D.C. on Black Friday was symbolic with the Black Lives Matter movement and the ‘Black Hand’ symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia criminal organization,” according to investigators.
Federal corrections officers responded to the attack in the prison’s law library by pepper-spraying Turscak, according to court documents. Justice Department officials said in a court filing that Turscak told officers he would have killed Chauvin if they had not responded sooner.
Turscak has been charged with attempted murder, assault with intent to commit murder, assault with a dangerous weapon and assault resulting in serious bodily injury in the attack on Chauvin.
Turscak has been in federal prison since 2001, where he’s been serving a 30-year sentence for racketeering and conspiring to commit murder in California. In court documents, Turscak admitted to cooperating with law enforcement officials investigating the Mexican Mafia, a criminal organization founded in California’s prison system.
Los Angeles Times reported at the time of his sentencing that he told a federal judge he had committed the crimes in California to protect himself since he was a paid FBI informant.
“I didn’t commit those crimes for kicks,” he told the judge at the time, according to the Times. “I did them because I had to if I wanted to stay alive.”
His cooperation resulted in charges against more than 40 people accused of being members or associates of the Mexican Mafia, but prosecutors stopped using him as an informant because he plotted to kill rival Mexican Mafia members in Los Angeles while on the feds’ payroll, the Times reported.
U.S. Bureau of Prison records show that Turscak has been relocated to a higher security prison near FCI Tucson.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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