Mother: ‘Facts show NY police killed Mohamed Bah’

Justice Committee

NEW YORK — “I was happy to get parents and families together” involved in actions against cop brutality and killings, Hawa Bah told the Militant Jan. 18. The “Faith Action for Mohamed Bah,” above, at the Department of Justice offices here Jan. 12 was organized by the Justice Committee to demand U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara prosecute the cops who killed her son, Mohamed Bah.

On Sept. 25, 2012, Hawa Bah dialed 911 to ask for an ambulance for her son, a student and taxi driver who was suffering from a mental breakdown. Instead of medical personnel, five heavily armed cops arrived. “I told them, ‘My son didn’t do anything wrong. He’s sick and needs to go to the hospital,’” she said. They pushed past her, went up to Bah’s apartment and shot him dead.

The original account by police spokespeople claimed Mohamed Bah had plunged a 13-inch knife into two officers, slicing their protective vests and prompting detective Edwin Mateo to yell, “He’s stabbing me, shoot him.”

In November 2013 a grand jury ruled that the “use of deadly physical force was not unlawful” in Bah’s killing. But documents showing that Mateo later changed his story, saying that he was actually hit by a police Taser, were kept from Bah and her attorneys. Officials say the knife and other evidence in the case were never tested for fingerprints and are now “contaminated” or “lost.”

In a civil lawsuit filed by Hawa Bah against the city, her attorney Randolph McLaughlin deposed Mateo, who admitted that Bah had not stabbed him.

— BRIAN WILLIAMS