Malikah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, was found dead in her Brooklyn residence Monday afternoon, police said, per NBC News. One of the six daughters of the assassinated civil rights activist, Shabazz, 56, and her twin sister were born after their father was killed.
Police reportedly said Shabazz’s daughter found her unresponsive in her home, and emergency services responded after she called 911. Police also shortly arrived.
A medical examiner who spoke with NBC New York said Shabazz was unresponsive at the time she was found, and she was later pronounced dead. Police also said her cause of death, at the moment, seems to be a result of natural causes.
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Following the news of her death, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Bernice King, sent her condolences to her family. “I’m deeply saddened by the death of #MalikahShabazz. My heart goes out to her family, the descendants of Dr. Betty Shabazz and Malcolm X,” King wrote on Twitter.
“Dr. Shabazz was pregnant with Malikah and her twin sister, Malaak, when Brother Malcolm was assassinated. Be at peace, Malikah.”
Malcolm X was speaking at an Organization of Afro-American Unity event at Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965, when he was fatally shot. Last week, two of the three men convicted in his assassination were exonerated.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance found after an almost two-year investigation that authorities withheld evidence in the trial of the two men — Muhammad A. Aziz, 83, and Khalil Islam, who died in 2009, The New York Times reported.
Aziz and Islam always maintained their innocence in the assassination. Islam died in 2009 but Aziz, who is now in his 80s, continued to fight to clear his record.
