It’s deeply saddening news as Malikah Shabazz, one of Malcolm X’s daughters has been found dead in her Brooklyn apartment.
According to Business Insider, the 56-year-old was found dead by her daughter Bettih Shabazz on Monday in her residence at about 4:40 p.m.
Investigators do not suspect foul play, sources say. An autopsy will determine Shabazz’s cause of death.
“I’m deeply saddened by the death of Malikah Shabazz,” Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., said in a post on Twitter.
“My heart goes out to her family, the descendants of Dr. Betty Shabazz and Malcolm X. Dr. Shabazz was pregnant with Malikah and her twin sister, Malaak, when Brother Malcolm was assassinated.”
Malikah Shabazz and her twin sister Malaak are the youngest of six daughters of Malcolm X. The daughters are Qubilah Shabazz, Attallah Shabazz, Gamilah Lumumba Shabazz, Ilyasah Shabazz, Malaak Shabazz, and Malikah Shabazz.
This comes just four days after a Manhattan court exonerated two of the men convicted of Malcolm X’s killing.
Malcolm X, at 39, was shot 16 times before a crowd of 400 people in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom, including his pregnant wife and three of their daughters. One of the killers blasted the victim from close range with a shotgun. Malaak and Malikah were born seven months after their father, famed activist Malcom x was assassinated Feb. 21, 1965.
Recall last week, two of the convicted killers of activist Malcolm X, Muhammad Aziz, 83, and the late Khalil Islam — were exonerated for the murder 55 years ago. The duo each spent some two decades in jail for the Feb. 21, 1965 shooting of Malcolm X aged 39 was shot 16 times before a crowd of 400 people in front of his pregnant wife and three daughters at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. Both were paroled in the 1980s.
The duo and a third man, Mujahid Abdul Halim, were found guilty of the murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life in prison a month later.
Two of the three men convicted in the assassination of Malcolm X were recently exonerated.
No physical evidence linked Aziz or Islam to murder or the crime scene, and both had alibis backed by testimony.
Halim, who admitted to being one of the killers, vouched for Aziz and Islam, testifying in the late ’70s that the men had “nothing to do with it.”
He identified four co-conspirators, members of the Nation of Islam from New Jersey — but no one else was ever arrested. Halim was paroled in 2010, reports say.
