Killer of Chicago teen attacked in prison

A white former Chicago police officer who fatally shot black teenager Laquan McDonald was assaulted by inmates in his cell at a Connecticut prison, the officer’s wife said.

Jason Van Dyke was transferred earlier this month to a federal prison in Danbury, Conn. He told his lawyers he was placed in the prison’s general population hours after his arrival and was assaulted there, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

“I don’t need people to go into his cell and attack him,” an emotional Tiffany Van Dyke said Thursday at a news conference. “The next time this could happen, they could kill him. I cannot bury my husband.”

A Cook County, Ill., jury in October found Jason Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm for the 2014 killing of McDonald, who was shot 16 times. In January, Van Dyke was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison.

The Illinois Department of Corrections confirmed Thursday that Jason Van Dyke was moved to federal custody but would not say why. Asked about the attack on Van Dyke, the federal Bureau of Prisons said in an email that it could confirm “an assault resulting in minor injuries” occurred on Feb. 7. The bureau declined to provide additional information, citing privacy concerns.

Van Dyke’s attorney, Jennifer Blagg, said her client was not severely injured and has since been placed in a segregated unit away from most inmates as a precaution.

AP/The Messenger-Inquirer/ALAN WARREN Tanner Cowan of Groves Electrical Services of Madisonville, Ky., pulls a wooden pallet through floodwater Thursday in Owensboro, Ky. The company uses the pallets as a driving surface for heavy equipment when working on electrical lines in nonflooded fields.