Sean Bell Remembered

Several dozen friends, family and supporters joined the widow of Sean Bell for an early-morning vigil in Queens Wednesday to mark the third anniversary of the day New York police gunned her husband down on their wedding day.
In Aril 2008, three NYPD detectives were acquitted of state charges in the Nov. 25, 2006 shooting that killed Bell and seriously wounded two of his friends outside a Queens strip club. The officers fired at least 50 bullets at the three unarmed men. During Wednesday’s demonstration on Liverpool Street, the location of the strip club where Bell and his friends had attended a bachelor’s party, the mourners lit 24 white candles, and a bell was rung 50 times, once for each shot fired.
“Someone is dead and no one’s responsible,” Nicole Paultre-Bell said Wednesday at the 5 a.m. gathering. “All I can do is just hope and pray.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a federal investigation into the shooting in hopes of convicting the officers, also attended the demonstration.

“It’s three years later, and I’m still as outraged as I was when I got the call three years ago this morning,” said Sharpton. “I think those officers were guilty of a crime and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” Sharpton said.