Ex-Chicago Officer Who Killed Laquan McDonald Is Beaten by Inmates, Lawyers Say

Van Dyke, who was sentenced in January to nearly seven years in prison in the 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald, was transferred last week from an Illinois prison to the federal penitentiary in Danbury, Connecticut. Van Dyke’s lawyers said he suffered injuries to his face and was bruised, but was expected to recover.

“We’re just asking that Jason Van Dyke be allowed to serve his time,” said Daniel Herbert, one of Van Dyke’s lawyers, at a news conference Thursday. “He’s a tough man. He’ll go in there and serve his sentence and keep his mouth shut. But he needs to be protected, because he can’t protect himself in there.”

Federal prison officials did not immediately respond to questions about his lawyers’ account of the attack or the reasons for Van Dyke’s transfer to the Connecticut prison. Illinois prison officials confirmed that Van Dyke, who was convicted in state court, had been transferred out of state custody, but they declined to provide any other details.

While in state prison in Illinois, Van Dyke was held in isolation and had no problems with other inmates, his lawyers said. The attack in Connecticut came on the same day he was placed in the general population there, they said. The lawyers said he had since been relocated to a segregated housing unit where he stays in his cell for 23 hours a day.

After his conviction last year, he was transferred out of Chicago to a jail in western Illinois to await sentencing. He and his family members have reported death threats, and his wife, Tiffany, told the judge that she feared her husband would not survive a prison stint.

Tiffany Van Dyke cried Thursday as she described learning about the attack in Connecticut.

“The worst has happened,” Van Dyke said. “I am fearful for him every single day.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.