New Witness Testifies in Bell Shooting
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A last-minute surprise witness who says he saw the police killing of an unarmed groom, Sean Bell, on his wedding day testified for several hours before a Queens grand jury yesterday as the secret panel completed another day of deliberations without an unsealed indictment against the five police officers who shot at Bell and his friends 50 times at a Jamaica, Queens, strip club last year.
The new witness was identified by Detectives’ Endowment Association President Michael Palladino as a 55-year-old man who appeared Wednesday at a police station to claim he saw a gun-wielding fourth man the night of shooting near a car belonging to Bell and his friends.
Some community leaders, including the Reverend Al Sharpton and Congressman Gregory Meeks, said they were suspicious of the witnesses’ motives and credibility.
“This doesn’t pass the smell test for me,” Mr. Meeks said from Washington, D.C.
