Posted on 05/18/2007 7:57:29 AM PDT by presidio9
Plans were set for a birthday celebration, but the guest of honor would not be there, and well-wishers were to give donations in place of presents.
Relatives, friends and supporters of Sean Bell, an unarmed man killed in a barrage of 50 police bullets on his wedding day, planned to gather Friday to mark what would have been his 24th birthday. The bittersweet birthday party at a Manhattan restaurant was planned as a fundraiser for his fiancee and their two daughters.
Bell was killed, and two of his friends were seriously wounded, after his bachelor party at a Queens topless bar on Nov. 25. Two police detectives have been indicted on manslaughter charges in the case; a third has been charged with reckless endangerment for a bullet that struck a train station across the street.
The officers, who were conducting an undercover vice operation at the club, have said they believed Bell and his friends were retrieving a gun from his car to settle a dispute.
The shooting has sparked an outpouring of criticism of the New York Police Department’s use of deadly force, undercover tactics and treatment of minorities.
“The spotlight—period—is unexpected,” Bell’s fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, told the Daily News this week. “We were forced into this. But I’m going to be here until the end, until we get justice for Sean.”
At Friday’s gathering, guests were to be greeted by several large photographs of Bell, the newspaper reported. They were to leave with pins engraved with Bell’s name and his usual parting phrase.
“He didn’t like to say bye-bye,” said Paultre Bell, who legally took her fiancé’s name after his death. “He’d say, ‘Don’t say bye, say: See you later.”’
this kinda thing happens when a person schedules their wedding a few years after they get knocked up twice.
Drug dealers very often don’t have life ensurance, so if the gravy train suddenly breaks down you’d better put something like this together, unless you want to be forced to get a job.
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