Fox News host Jesse Watters interviewed a former Mexican Mafia gang member who says he knew former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s prison attacker.
“He had absolutely nothing to gain from this,” Ramon “Mundo” Mendoza told Watters on his Monday night show.
Derek Chauvin's attacker used to be called "Stranger." The woke white Mexican Mafia FBI informant had less than 3 years left on his sentence, yet tried to murder America's most high-profile inmate. Why? A former Mexican Mafia member, Ramon "Mundo" Mendoza, knows all about… pic.twitter.com/H7ydACXNUL
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) December 5, 2023
Mendoza said that he knew Chauvin’s attacker, John Turscak, as “Stranger” and described him as a loose cannon. Turscak is accused of stabbing Chauvin 22 times with an improvised knife on Black Friday, allegedly telling FBI agents that the attempt on Chauvin’s life was “symbolic with the Black Lives Matter movement and the ‘Black Hand’ symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia criminal organization.”
The attack took place at the Federal Correctional Institution-Tucson, where Chauvin is serving concurrently his 22½-year state murder sentence and 21-year federal sentence on civil rights charges in connection to the death of George Floyd.
Mendoza went on to say that he knows that Turscak was raised in the street gang culture in Los Angeles, and that he became a gang member at the age of 16.
“Did you have any understanding that he was some sort of BLM supporter?” Watters asked Mendoza.
“I can tell you for a fact, contrary to that, I kinda laughed when I saw two things. I saw that he had allegedly stated that one of his motives or reasons was to support Black Lives Matter and also to commemorate the Black Hand, which is the official tattoo of the Mexican Mafia prison gang,” Mendoza said. “Well first of all, he, like many Mexican Mafia members, were anti-black. That was part and parcel of who he was as a bad guy, as a gang member, and records will reflect that. Number two, he cannot at this time ever pretend to represent the Black Hand or the Mexican Mafia prison gang, because he’s persona non grata.”
According to Mendoza, Turscak is “earmarked for execution” by the Mexican Mafia, presumably for his role as an FBI informant. He said that while Turscak may have felt “a degree of fear” about that, the unpredictability is part of life as a career criminal.
Watters pointed out that Turscak only had three years left of his decades-long sentence, questioning why he would attempt to murder a man when he was so close to freedom.
Chauvin was hospitalized after the attack but has since been transferred back to prison custody for follow-up care, according to Gregory Erickson, one of his attorneys.
“His family is very concerned about the facility’s capacity to protect Derek from further harm,” he said. “They remain unassured that any changes have been made to the faulty procedures that allowed Derek’s attack to occur in the first place.”
Hayley Feland
Hayley Feland previously worked as a journalist with The Minnesota Sun, The Wisconsin Daily Star, and The College Fix. She is a Minnesota native with a passion for politics and journalism.
