The fiancée of Sean Bell wrote a letter to the parents of Trayvon Martin this week, lamenting that “yet again, an innocent black man has been killed.”
Bell was killed in 2006 when cops opened fire on his car, saying they thought he had a gun. The officers were indicted but acquitted. In March, one was fired, and three others were forced to retire.
Trayvon Martin was shot in February in Florida by a neighbor, who had reported Martin as acting suspiciously to 911. The shooter, George Zimmerman, said Martin attacked him, and police did not charge him under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, saying he acted in self defense.
“It is truly a living nightmare to see another innocent young man’s life senselessly taken away over his demeanor,” Nicole Paultre Bell wrote in the open letter.
She encouraged Martin’s parents, saying they have already helped to make a difference.
“People are standing up for Trayvon because they feel your pain, and understand that this could easily have been their son, husband, father, brother, cousin or nephew and we are outright tired of it,” she wrote.
Sharing “what I have learned throughout protest after protest,” she advised, “Faith and endurance are the keys to everything.”
Read the entire letter here.
