Nicole Bell (middle) with SUNY OW Students. Photo: Nicole Paultre Bell’s Facebook.
On Tuesday, February 5th, SUNY Old Westbury hosted their fourth event in celebration of Black History Month. The event was called “Celebrating Sean Bell: A Discussion with Nicole Paultre Bell-Earle”, the former fianceé of Sean Bell. It was held in the Recital Hall of the Campus Center and was sponsored by the Black Student Union, Student Government Association, Campus Activities Board, and First Year Experience.
Before the discussion, the audience watched a short documentary from Complex Magazine that discusses the life of Sean Bell that led up to his murder on November 25th, 2006. The documentary Before the Hashtag: Sean Bell features Nicole Paultre Bell and Joe Guzman who was the friend and shooting survivor of Sean. The clip shows the road of fighting for justice after Sean’s murder.
Sean Bell was a twenty-three-year-old man from South Jamaica, Queens New York who was with a group of friends including the two survivors, Joe Guzman, and Trent Benefield at his bachelor party in Club Kalua in Jamaica, Queens New York. On the early morning of November 25th, 2006 the day he and his fiance were to tie the knot, there was an argument between Guzman and another man outside the bar. Shortly after the argument was diffused, Sean and his friends left unbeknownst to them they were being followed by former NYPD Detective Isnora who wore plain clothes. Fearing that a shooting might take place, Isnora called his backup team which included four other officers to follow Sean and his companions. Once Isnora was in front of the Bell’s car, Sean accelerated his car in which it turned a corner and hit an unmarked police minivan. A total of fifty shots were then fired from the minivan. Guzman was shot seventeen times while Benefield was struck four times. Sean was shot four times in which he died soon after. Both Benefield and Guzman survived with Guzman left with permanent injuries that required him receiving many surgeries and blood transfusions. The three detectives were later put on trial in which they later were acquitted on April 25th, 2008. They are currently no longer working for the NYPD.
Host and Black Student Union Member, Olu Ugunlade introduced Nicole Paultre Bell to the stage where she discussed the path to justice and life after the death of her fiance. Bell began by talking about growing up in South Jamaica, Queens and coming from a middle-class family. She attended schools with other African Americans and was taught the importance of who you are and speaking up. “It’s sort of what I had in my backbone growing up as a child. Never in a million years would I think that at some point I would have to end up fighting for justice. End up fighting for not only Sean’s legacy and for his name, but also for my own,” she said.
Larry Smith interviews Nicole Bell
Nicole and Sean both attended John Adams High School located in Queens, where they met. Sean was a baseball player throughout high school and was described as “shy” outside the field, but on the field, he was a different person. Bell described him “as a humble guy. He didn’t like too much attention on him. When he smiled, he would brighten up the room.”
Bell then talked about her two daughters that she shared with Sean, Jada who is now sixteen and Jordyn who is now twelve. Jada was three and a half years old and Jordyn was only five months old when their father was murdered. “I went from planning my wedding, having a wedding dress hanging in my closet to now having to take Sean’s suit to the funeral that he was going walk down the aisle with,” Bell explained the way she coped with Sean’s death was through public speaking and reaching out to other families who lost their loved ones in a tragedy,mostly to police brutality. The way she views the tragedies is “a gun is a gun and no matter who is behind that gun, when an innocent person loses their lives, the killer needs to go to jail. Regardless of who you are. No one is above the law.” She discussed mourning the loss of Sean and trying to fight for justice.“Raising two babies now is having to fight a system that is so much bigger than me. So much bigger than my family. So much bigger than the elegance of my family who had lived their entire lives and never have to go through what I’ve faced at twenty-two years old.” She talks about having conversations with her daughters most of the time about the importance of who we are and speaking up and standing out.
She also went on and talked about the use of social media. “When you have someone who loses their life to police brutality, Sean’s name gets a hashtag on that. So it’s an eye opener and reminds us every time, there’s a big police brutality case. There’s a big movement that’s happening.” Bell’s goal for her daughters is for them growing up and making sure they are strong, smart, happy, and healthy.
Bell discussed further the beginning of her and her family’s efforts to fight for justice which started the day after Sean’s death. The first rally took place in front of Mary Immaculate Hospital, where both victims Joe Guzman and Trent Benefield were hospitalized. There, she met civil rights activist and Baptist minister, Reverend Al Sharpton at the rally and was there to support the family and spread the light and positivity. She also mentioned about finding time to mourn and healing herself. “Now looking back, I can tell you that there is a period when you just have to mourn. You have to spend that time healing yourself. For me, healing was a lot of years. It was really in between speaking out, it was in between rallying and fighting for justice and getting laws to change. It was really in between doing interviews.”
BSU President Larry Smith and Nicole Bell
Bell compared the time period in 2006 and the recent years of the developments of many movements such as Black Lives Matter in which she is very proud that everybody is coming together and trying to move forward by getting justice for their loved ones who were killed due to police brutality.
Adjusting wasn’t always easy for Bell as she sometimes consulted her family for advice about the direction to go after Sean’s death and many other people are killed through these tragedies. “It still happens. Not enough has been done. Not enough was being done that day and not enough is being done now,” Bell said.
Bell never knew how big Sean’s story was going to be until she saw the tremendous amount of support from many people including all over the world, even seeing sidewalks filled with candles for Sean in a street in South Jamaica, Queens where it is now called “The Sean Bell Way”.
Although there were so many people supporting Nicole, both hers and Sean’s family, there was many criticism and backlashes from others. “I was sent messages saying that I and my daughter should’ve been in the car with him,” Bell explained that it is not easy being an activist and having that large amount of support from people, while there are others who are negatively backlashing you, however, the positive outweighs the negative.
Bell concluded the discussion by advising the audience to be active in their community such as voting in small and large elections, fight for changes or laws, run for political positions, join clubs or organizations etc.
Sean Bell
05/23/83 – 11/25/06
