Three long years and a lifetime of pain – that’s what Nicole Paultre-Bell has had to endure while waiting for proceedings to begin on a civil rights lawsuit she filed after her fiancé, Sean Bell, was fatally gunned down by NYPD officers.
Yesterday, Brooklyn Federal Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. lifted a stay that was put in place by the city pending an internal investigation into the officers’ actions.
Judge Johnson also scheduled a settlement conference to take place on July 20 for the lawsuit which accuses the defendants of wrongful death, negligence, assault and civil rights violations.
“It doesn’t matter how long it takes, we’ll be here,” said Paultre-Bell in the New York Daily News. “We need some type of justice. So far, everywhere we’ve turned, it’s been denied.”
Bell was killed outside a strip club in 2006 while leaving his bachelor party on what would have been his wedding day. In 2008, three police officers were brought to trial and acquitted of manslaughter for the shooting.
Yesterday, Bell’s family joined Rev. Al Sharpton and community leaders to re-name a New York street Sean Bell Way. The street is located in the Jamaica section of Queens.