Star Tribune
Derek Chauvin survives Arizona federal prison attack; stabbing raises security questions
Derek Chauvin has survived a stabbing at an Arizona federal prison, law enforcement officials said Saturday, raising immediate questions about why Minnesota’s most notorious inmate was vulnerable to attack and what should be done to protect him in the future.
The former Minneapolis police officer has been imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson for killing George Floyd while on duty in 2020. As of Saturday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons had not formally confirmed Chauvin was attacked by a fellow inmate a day earlier at the medium-security facility, but law enforcement leaders in Minnesota said they were officially notified he was.
A spokesman for Attorney General Keith Ellison, who decried the attack, said Saturday morning that Chauvin was “expected to survive.” Brian Evans said Ellison’s office had no further information about Chauvin’s stabbing, which was being investigated by the FBI.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons, which like the FBI is under the Justice Department, declined to respond to questions or provide additional details about the attack, what led up to it or where Chauvin was being kept. The bureau said in a statement Friday night that the inmate in question had been taken to a hospital.
“I have not heard from the Bureau of Prisons at all,” Chauvin’s attorney, William Mohrman, said Saturday. He said his office has tried to the contact the prisons bureau “regarding the media reports of an attack on Mr. Chauvin, and we have not heard anything back.”
Chauvin, 47, has been serving a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22 ½-year state sentence for second-degree murder. Floyd, who was Black, died in May 2020 while pinned under the knee of Chauvin, who is white, at the corner of Chicago Avenue and 38th Street in south Minneapolis. Floyd’s death ignited days of protests and riots.
In August 2022, Chauvin was transferred from Minnesota to the Arizona prison, which has 382 inmates, according to its website. The prison has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages, according to the Associated Press.
“He doesn’t deserve any extra punishment. I’m upset about this,” Ellison said in an interview Friday night after he was briefed on the attack.
One Minnesota corrections official, who declined to speak for attribution, said Chauvin would likely be housed in a special section of any prison — whether in Arizona or Minnesota.
“It would be standard practice that he would be separated from the general population, especially someone who is high profile and especially in a case with national prominence,” the corrections official said.
“It’s not clear to me how this happened.”
Chauvin’s attorneys long advocated for separating him from the general population to protect his safety.
While awaiting sentencing, he was kept in solitary confinement for more than six months at Oak Park Heights prison, Minnesota’s high-security prison.
Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, who issued Chauvin’s federal sentence, said he had intended to request that Chauvin be imprisoned at a location close to family members in Iowa and Minnesota. But Magnuson acknowledged it was not his final decision to make, and Chauvin ended up in Tucson.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Chauvin’s latest attempt to vacate his murder conviction. The week before that, Chauvin separately argued in court filings that he would not have pleaded guilty in his federal case if his then-attorney had informed him that a pathologist had offered to testify that Chauvin didn’t cause Floyd’s death.
The facility housing Chauvin is part of a federal correctional complex in Tucson that includes a high-security prison and a minimum-security camp. In November 2022, an inmate at the prison camp reportedly obtained a gun and tried to shoot a visitor in the head.
Chauvin is the latest high-profile inmate to be attacked at a federal prison. In July, convicted sex offender and former Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed repeatedly at a facility in Florida.
In 2018, former Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was killed shortly after being transferred to a federal prison in West Virginia. A Justice Department report late last year excoriated the West Virginia prison’s management for Bulger’s death.
A series of Associated Press reports in 2022 found that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has long been plagued by staffing shortages, chronic violence, inmate deaths and sexual abuse of prisoners by staff.
Star Tribune staff writer Rochelle Olson contributed to this report.
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
