Family disputes Miami Beach police shooting
un-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-tourist-miami-bn091509,0,4626895.story
Family members of a tourist who was shot and killed by a police officer over the weekend say he shouldn’t have been shot.
Miami Beach police said they were looking for a man who was reportedly
walking with a gun about 4 a.m. near Washington Avenue and 15th Street.
Minutes later, a police officer stopped Husien Shehada, 29, a limousine
chauffeur from Woodbridge, Va., who was nearing the end of a five-day
vacation clubbing in Miami Beach.
Shehada and the officer spoke. Unknown words were exchanged. A confrontation followed.
Then, according to police, the officer shot Shehada, who later died at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.
All other details remain shrouded in mystery. Police and family members
have different accounts of the shooting and what happened next.
After the shooting, police arrested Shehada’s brother, Samer, and
charged him with battery. Police said he was beating a woman and
kicking her head.
But Samer Shehada’s girlfriend, Karlia Karpel, denies the allegations,
saying she was with him all Saturday night and Sunday morning.
”Can you look at me?” she asked Monday evening, sitting in the lobby
of the Loews Miami Beach Hotel. There were no visible20bruises or cuts
on her face, arms or legs. “Do you see any bruises? Nothing.”
Samer Shehada, a 31-year-old engineer, was arraigned Monday morning and posted $1,500 bond.
The Shehada brothers were born in the United States to Palestinian
immigrant parents. Two of their uncles traveled to Miami on Monday to
piece together why Husien Shehada was shot by police minutes after he,
his brother and their girlfriends left their hotel.
His cousin, Najwa Ghannam, said police stopped the wrong man.
”How can an officer shoot an unarmed person to death?” she wrote in an e-mail to The Miami Herald. “They shot to kill. My cousin didn’t stand a chance.”
Police did not provide additional details about the shooting and had not released the officer’s name by Monday night.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office is investigating the shooting.
In addition, the Miami Beach Police Department’s internal affairs unit
is investigating what led to the shooting, according to Detective Juan
Sanchez, a department spokesman.
Family members said an autopsy had not yet been done, but they had
still made funeral plans, which included returning Shehada to Virginia
on Tuesday.
The vacation, Karpel said, was supposed to be an unforgettable gift
from Husien Shehada to his girlfriend, who accompanied them on the
trip. The plan was simple: two brothers, their girlfriends, the beach
and20clubs. The shooting changed everything, Karpel said.
”Sunday was going to be an all-beach day,” she said. “It was the worst day of my life.”
The family has hired criminal defense attorney John Contini to sort out what they allege is police wrongdoing.
”I think it’s clear the police are desperately trying to cover up a
police killing of an unsuspecting, innocent citizen,” Contini said.
Contini said that after the shooting, police individually questioned
the brother and both women, asking them whether Husien spoke Arabic. He
said he had already been contacted by worried representatives of the
Arab League in Washington, D.C.
According to Contini, several people witnessed the shooting, and he
urged others to contact him at his Fort Lauderdale office to provide
testimony.
June 20th, 2009 at 1:38 AM
There was a protest this evening in Miami Beach organized by several groups against the cop execution of Husien Shehada. The Miami CBS affiliate has some video footage at the website there under the titles: “WEB EXTRA: Surveillance Shows SOBE Police Shooting” and “Group Protests Washington Ave. Police Shooting”.
The same cop who killed Husien Shehada was involved in another fatal shooting the very next day that shut down the MacArthur Causeway for hours.
Here is the message and press release from protest organizers sent out to publicize tonight’s demonstration:
—South Florida Emergency Protest—
Justice for Husien Shehada! Jail Killer Cops!
For Immediate Release June 19, 2009
Press Contact
Muhammed Malik(305)761-6843
Emmanuel Lopez (305) 710-3189
Miami, FL—A number of South Florida community organizations will mobilize for an emergency protest in Miami Beach today, June 19th, to demand justice for Husien Shehada, a 29 year old Palestinian American whose life was cut short at the hands of another racist, killer cop on June 15th. The demonstration will be held from 6pm to 9pm in from of the police station on 1100 Washington Avenue, the site of Shehada’s murder.
The participating organizations include: South Florida Palestine Solidarity Network, Jewish Voice for Peace-South Florida, Palestinian American Organization, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Florida, and many others.
Husein’s death is another brutal example of how an epidemic of racist police killings is plaguing communities of color throughout the United States. Violent police harassment is a routine part of life for Black, Latino, Arab, and other minority youth because of the countrywide institutionalization of racial profiling, stop and frisk, anti-gang injunctions, racist checkpoints—and of course, out right murder.
Brother Shehada’s death was no different: police questioned Husien’s partner, Karlia Karpel, and brother, Samir Shehada, as to whether he was “Arabic” or if he “spoke Arabic” as Husein lay dying at their feet.
Not surprisingly, the Miami Police Department is refusing to release any information on the shooting. The MPD even requested that the owners of Twist, a nearby nightclub, to not release surveillance video that would clearly show the cold blooded murder of Husien. The Miami PD knows that they stand to have demonstrations that will echo the outcries heard after the murders of Sean Bell in New York, Oscar Grant in Oakland, and the countless victims of criminal police aggression.
The organizations mobilizing for the demonstration today will also take note that on the day following the shooting, the Miami Herald reported that city commissioners where conspiring to hand themselves more power over the Civilian Investigation Panel (CIP), a community oversight board that investigates complaints on officers and makes recommendations on police policy.
The murder of Husien Shehada shows how the commissioners attempt to hand pick the members of this panel is a step in the wrong direction. Community members will make the following demands to ensure that Miami residents have more, not less, control over the CIP: the panel should be 1) popularly elected, not handpicked by politicians; 2) should control its own budget, not be subjected to the strings attached by the commission; and 3) have the power to not only make recommendations on police policy, but demand that officers who break a standard code of conduct be fired and brought up on charges if justice requires.
The need for community control to make these demands are clear: the officer who killed the unarmed Husien in cold blood is not awaiting his arraignment in a jail cell, but continues to collect a pay check as he sits behind a comfortable desk. The South Florida community stands with the Shehada family in this time of tragedy. We will carry the message of Samir Shehada, who could only muster up the following words at his younger brother’s funeral on Wednesday: “I hope justice is served, because it wasn’t right and that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
STATEMENTS FROM FAMILY: “He wasn’t armed, how can you shoot someone for no reason? I need to know the reason, we all need to know what happened and we don’t know,” said Husien’s cousin Najwa Ghannam. “He did not deserve to die at 29-years-old,” said Samir Shehada, Husien’s brother who was with during shooting. “He doesn’t even own a gun! We were vacationing, we were vacationing.” “There was no hating him, there’s no disliking Husien, you loved Husein (chokes up) that’s how it is!” “It’s just crazy what it came to how an innocent person had to die. It shouldn’t have been him. I just can’t understand why it’s happening like this. It just doesn’t make sense to us,” Yasmean Shehada, sister, said from the family’s home, where relatives gathered in mourning. Samer’s girlfriend, Karlia Karpel, who was with them, called it the worst day of her life. “All I heard was people say they killed him for no reason,” she said. The family has hired criminal defense attorney John Contini to sort out what they allege is police wrongdoing. ”I think it’s clear the police are desperately trying to cover up a police killing of an unsuspecting, innocent citizen,” Contini said.
NEWS COVERAGE:
Video Shows SOBE Police Shooting Aftermath: http://cbs4.com/local/South.Beach.Police.2.1049315.html
TV Coverage: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/local/061609_va_man_shot_on_florida_vacation
Sun Sentinel (Broward) : http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-tourist-miami-bn091509,0,4626895.story
Miami Herald: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-tourist-miami-bn091509,0,4626895.story
June 20th, 2009 at 8:38 PM
Thanks for the update Paul!
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:34 AM
After all the protest have died down and this man has been buried, what next? will anything change in Miami or anywhere else in this country? Why don’t these issue raise the same level of outrage as a little girl being allegedly kidnapped by her father? How deeply will this really be investigated? I don’t know what the answer is but this shit is outrageous. Do we need to start arming ourselves against the police now? It would seem so but im sure they would like nothing better. It would give them more people to villanize and would just serve to justify their actions. This shit is crazy the more I hear about these. I would never know about this story if not for malcolm-che. It may be time to turn up the lights on these criminal organizations that falsely claim to protect and serve.