An incarcerated former gang member and FBI informant was charged Friday with attempted murder in the stabbing last week of ex-Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin at a federal prison in Arizona.
John Turscak stabbed Chauvin 22 times at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson and said he would’ve killed Chauvin had correctional officers not responded so quickly, federal prosecutors said.
Turscak, serving a 30-year sentence for crimes committed while a member of the Mexican Mafia gang, told investigators he thought about attacking Chauvin for about a month because the former officer, convicted of murdering George Floyd, is a high-profile inmate, prosecutors said. Turscak later denied wanting to kill Chauvin, prosecutors said.
Did someone else want him to do it? I hope that’s being investigated, especially his relationship with the FBI.
Turscak is a former Mexican Mafia member who admitted carrying out several crimes while working as an undercover FBI informant, was sentenced in Los Angeles federal court to 30 years in prison.
Turscak, 30, expressed bitter disappointment with his sentence. He told U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz, “I didn’t commit those crimes for kicks. I did them because I had to if I wanted to stay alive. I told that to the [FBI] agents, and they just said, ‘Do what you have to do.’ ”
Turscak told FBI agents interviewing him after the assault that he attacked Chauvin on Black Friday as a symbolic connection to the Black Lives Matter movement. How stupid can one be? He picked a big sale day that had nothing to do with Black Lives Matter.
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