His parents were Saikou and Kadijatou Diallo
He had 3 siblings.
Amadou was part of a historic Fulbe trading family in Guinea.
He was born in Sinoe County in Liberia on September 2, 1975, while his father was working there, and grew up following his family to Togo, Bangkok, Singapore, Thailand, and back to Guinea.
In September 1996, he came to New York City where other family members had immigrated.
He and a cousin started a business.
According to his family’s lawyer, Kyle B. Watters, he sought to remain in the United States by filing an application for political asylum under false pretenses, saying that he was from Mauritania and that his parents had been killed in fighting to buttress his claim that he had credible fear of going back to his country.
He sold video cassettes, gloves, and socks on the sidewalk along 14th Street during the day.
In the early hours of February 4, 1999, the 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo Who was born September 2, 1975 was shot and killed by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers—Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss.
Carroll would later claim to have mistaken him for a rape suspect from one year earlier, though his claim was never confirmed by any objective evidence.
The officers fired a combined total of 41 shots, 19 of which struck Diallo, outside his apartment at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of the Bronx.
The four officers, who were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit, were charged with second-degree murder and acquitted at trial in Albany, New York.
Diallo was unarmed and a firestorm of controversy erupted after the event, as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both inside and outside of New York. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were central to the ensuing controversy.
Why? What happened?
In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal.
At about 12:40 a.m., police officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy, who were all in street clothes, passed by in a Ford Taurus.
Carroll later testified that Diallo matched the general description of a serial rapist who had struck a year earlier, or that he might have been a “lookout”.
The officers allege that they loudly identified themselves as NYPD officers, but a witness, Schrrie Elliott, testified that they started shooting without any warnings.
The officers also allege the following, “Diallo ran up the outside steps toward his apartment house doorway at their approach, ignoring their orders to stop and ‘show his hands’.
The porch lightbulb was out and Diallo was backlit by the inside vestibule light, showing only a silhouette.
Diallo then reached into his jacket and withdrew his wallet.
Seeing the man holding a small square object, Carroll yelled ‘Gun!’ to alert his colleagues.
The officers opened fire on Diallo, claiming that they believed he was holding a gun.
During the shooting, lead officer McMellon tripped backward off the front stairs, causing the other officers to believe he had been shot.” No objective evidence was presented in support of these allegations. Only the testimony of the defendants.
The four officers fired 41 shots with semi-automatic weapons, more than half of which went astray as Diallo was hit 19 times.
The post-shooting investigation found no weapons on Diallo’s body; the item he had pulled out of his jacket was not a gun, but a rectangular black wallet.
The internal NYPD investigation ruled the officers had acted within policy, based on what a reasonable police officer would have done in the same circumstances with the information they had.
The Diallo shooting led to a review of police training policy and the use of full metal jacket (FMJ) bullets.
On March 25, 1999, a Bronx grand jury indicted the four officers on charges of second-degree murder and reckless endangerment.
All four officers’ bail were set at $100,000.
On December 16, an appellate court ordered a change of venue to Albany, New York, stating that pretrial publicity had made a fair trial in New York City impossible.
On February 25, 2000, after two days of deliberation, a jury in Albany acquitted the officers of all charges.
Officer Kenneth Boss had been previously involved in an incident where an unarmed black man was shot:
22-year-old Patrick Bailey died after Boss shot him on October 31, 1997.
As of 2012, Boss is the only remaining officer working for the NYPD.
After his acquittal, Boss was disarmed and reassigned to desk duty.
In October 2012, Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly restored Boss’ ability to carry a firearm against the protests of Diallo’s family.
On December 17, 2015, Kenneth Boss received a promotion to the rank of sergeant despite objections from the victim’s mother and civil rights activists.
Boss was promoted in accordance to police policy, which is not subject to review by top department officials.
To be continued…
Sources : African-Research.com and wikipedia.com
