WASHINGTON (AP) — Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing female gymnasts including Olympic medalists, was stabbed multiple times during an altercation with another inmate at a federal prison in Florida.
Two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press the attack happened Sunday at United States Penitentiary Coleman. The people said he was in stable condition Monday.
One of the people said Nassar had been stabbed in the back and in the chest. The prison was experiencing staffing shortages, and one of the people familiar with the matter said the officers assigned to the unit where Nassar was held were working mandated overtime shifts.
The people were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the attack or the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.
Nassar is serving decades in prison for convictions in state and federal courts. He admitted sexually assaulting athletes when he worked at Michigan State University and at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics, which trains Olympians. Separately, Nassar pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography.
The federal Bureau of Prisons has experienced significant staffing shortages in the last few years, an issue thrust into the spotlight when disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein took his own life at a federal jail in New York in 2019. An Associated Press investigation in 2021 revealed nearly one-third of federal correctional officer positions vacant nationwide, forcing prisons to use cooks, teachers, nurses and other workers to guard inmates. The staffing shortages have hampered the response to emergencies at other prisons, including suicides.
On Sunday, both officers working in the unit with Nassar were working overtime shifts. One of the officers was on the third straight shift, working a 16-hour day, one of the people said. And the other officer was on their second straight shift, the person said.
During victim impact statements in 2018, several athletes testified that over the course of Nassar’s more than two decades of sexual abuse they had told adults, including coaches and athletic trainers, what was happening but that it went unreported.
More than 100 women, including Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, collectively sought more than $1 billion from the federal government for the FBI’s failure to stop Nassar when agents became aware of allegations against him in 2015. He was arrested by Michigan State University police in 2016, more than a year later.
(Associated Press)