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The Tragic Death Of Sean Bell, The Unarmed Black Man Who Was Fatally Shot By NYPD Officers On His Wedding Day
Nicole Paultre Bell/InstagramSean Bell was unarmed when he was shot to death by NYPD officers in 2006.
On Nov. 25, 2006, Sean Bell was celebrating his bachelor party with several friends at a club in Queens. However, what began as a night of fun soon took a tragic turn.
One of Bell’s friends got into an argument with another man on the street outside of the club, and an undercover police officer standing nearby thought he heard someone say something about a gun. So, the cop alerted his partners and followed Bell to his vehicle.
As plainclothes officers surrounded the car, Sean Bell panicked. He crashed while trying to drive away — and then one of the cops supposedly saw Bell’s friend reach for a gun. The officers opened fire.
Sean Bell was shot four times and died just hours before his wedding. An ensuing investigation revealed that nobody in Bell’s vehicle was armed, but all of the officers involved were acquitted on manslaughter charges after a judge ruled that their actions were justified. The incident sparked protests against police violence in New York City, but two decades later, the country continues to grapple with shootings of unarmed citizens.
The 2006 Shooting Death Of Sean Bell
Sean Bell was a 23-year-old man who grew up in Queens. He played baseball at John Adams High School, studied acting, and was planning to become an electrician. He had two young daughters with his fiancée, Nicole Paultre, and their wedding was set for Nov. 25, 2006.
Nicole Paultre Bell/InstagramSean Bell with his fiancée, Nicole Paultre, and their two daughters, Jada and Jordyn, shortly before his death.
On the night of Nov. 24, Sean Bell and his friends Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman headed to Club Kalua in Queens to celebrate Bell’s upcoming nuptials. They didn’t know that the business was flooded with undercover and plainclothes police officers who were investigating accusations of prostitution.
Around 4 a.m. on Nov. 25, Guzman reportedly got into a verbal altercation with a man outside of the club. An undercover cop standing nearby, Detective Gescard Isnora, claimed to have heard Guzman say, “…get my gun,” so he followed Bell, Guzman, and Benefield to Bell’s car. Isnora ordered the men to stop, but Bell sped off, striking Isnora before accidentally crashing into an unmarked law enforcement van that was parked nearby.
Isnora later testified that he thought the men were retrieving a gun from the vehicle and were going to return to the club to shoot the person Guzman had argued with:
“I noticed Bell and Guzman in the front seat. I walked and I stated, ‘Police, don’t move, police, don’t move.’ I identified myself several times. Several moments later the car — the driver floored the car, struck me in my leg… Once the vehicle had struck my leg, it then hit the P-Van, the prisoner van, and I noticed that the car then raced back… to hit me again.”
Attorneys for Guzman and Benefield, who survived the shooting, later stated that Bell thought he was being carjacked, as none of the officers surrounding his vehicle were in uniform.
Detective Isnora then testified that he saw Guzman reach into his waistband and move his arm up. “I noticed that his arm was going in an upward motion,” Isnora stated, “and I yelled, ‘Gun!’… I felt that he had a gun and I couldn’t wait anymore.”
Isnora and four other officers began shooting. One of them, Michael Oliver, fired 31 bullets. In a matter of seconds, Sean Bell was dead.
The Aftermath Of The Controversial Shooting
As the chaos of the shooting came to an end, a grisly scene came to light on Liverpool Street. The officers had fired at least 50 shots. One of the bullets had narrowly missed a bystander standing half a block away and shattered a glass window at a train station.
After being struck twice, Trent Benefield jumped out of the back passenger side of the car and tried to run, but he was swiftly apprehended. He spent several days in the hospital and had a metal rod inserted into his lower leg.
Nazimul Razack/Wikimedia CommonsA memorial to Sean Bell on the street where he was killed.
Guzman was more seriously injured. He was shot 19 times. “Only thing I could move was my arms,” he testified during the trial against the officers involved in the shooting, as reported by The New York Times in 2008. “I couldn’t move nothing else. I thought I was dead. I knew I was dead.”
Four of the bullets had struck Bell in the neck and torso. Guzman recalled, “I thought it was over. So I’m telling him, ‘S. I love you, son.’ And he said, ‘I love,’ he whispered back, ‘I love you, too.’ But then he stopped moving. He stopped talking.”
The investigation that followed Sean Bell’s death revealed that Guzman hadn’t been reaching for a gun at all. In fact, nobody in Bell’s vehicle was armed.
Detective Isnora later said that he had seen a fourth person flee from the car and posited that this man may have been carrying the alleged weapon, but no evidence ever emerged to support these claims. The police had fired dozens of shots at three unarmed men.
Elizabeth Williams/Wikimedia CommonsA courtroom sketch of Detective Gescard Isnora testifying at trial in April 2008.
Per The New York Times, Michael Bloomberg, who was the mayor of New York City at the time of Sean Bell’s death, stated in the immediate aftermath, “It sounds to me like excessive force was used. I can tell you that it is to me unacceptable or inexplicable how you can have 50-odd shots fired.”
However, an attorney for the police officers responded, “We feel confident that once all of the facts and circumstances of this tragic incident are known, then our detectives will be exonerated. This was a tragedy, but not a crime.”
And in 2008, a judge agreed.
The Acquittal Of The Police Officers Who Killed Sean Bell
Four months after the shooting, a grand jury indicted three of the officers involved: Gescard Isnora, Michael Oliver, and Marc Cooper. Isnora, who had initiated the gunfire, and Oliver, the officer who fired 31 shots, were charged with manslaughter. Cooper was charged with reckless endangerment.
The officers requested a bench trial rather than a jury trial, and they appeared in front of Justice Arthur J. Cooperman in early 2008. Cooperman found that some of Benefield’s and Guzman’s testimony didn’t align with the evidence presented, and he acquitted Isnora, Oliver, and Cooper, stating that the officers’ actions were justified from a strictly legal standpoint.
The acquittal was followed by protests throughout New York City, some of which were led by civil rights activist Al Sharpton. Bell’s supporters criticized police brutality and the shooting of an unarmed Black man. His critics countered that Bell had previously been arrested for possession of drugs and a gun, so the officers weren’t wrong to be cautious.
Felton Davis/Wikimedia CommonsMore than 200 protesters were arrested following the acquittal of the police officers who killed Sean Bell.
Although Isnora, Oliver, and Cooper didn’t face criminal charges for Sean Bell’s death, they were forced to resign from the NYPD in 2012. The city also paid out a $7 million settlement to Guzman, Benefield, and Bell’s family.
In the end, however, whether the tragedy was a simple misunderstanding or a gross example of racial profiling and police brutality, Sean Bell’s loved ones were forced to go on without him. His father, William Bell, who was with Sean just an hour before his death, grieved both his loss and the NYPD’s reaction to it.
“He’s gone,” said the elder Bell. “Not here in my heart he’s not gone, but he’s gone… At least they could say I’m sorry… It’s more about politics than human life.”
After reading about the 2006 death of Sean Bell, go inside nine police scandals from American history. Then, look through 33 photos of Bloody Sunday, when British soldiers killed 13 unarmed protesters in Northern Ireland.
The post The Tragic Death Of Sean Bell, The Unarmed Black Man Who Was Fatally Shot By NYPD Officers On His Wedding Day appeared first on All That's Interesting.
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