Malcolm X’s grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, died under mysterious circumstances in Mexico City last week. As more details emerge about how and why he was killed, two men have been arrested and charged with murder and robbery in connection with the alleged beating that left the 29-year-old dead.
The New York Times reports:
The men taken into custody, David Hernández Cruz and Manuel Alejandro Pérez de Jesús, worked as waiters at the Palace Club, a downtown bar where Mr. Shabazz, 28, was beaten, in what the city prosecutor called a dispute over an excessive bill.
Two other bar employees who the authorities said participated in the beating, which left Mr. Shabazz with fatal skull, jaw and rib fractures, were being sought.
The body of Mr. Shabazz, who for years had wrestled with living in the shadow of his grandfather’s fame, was still at a city morgue on Monday while American consular officials worked to have it returned to the United States. A family spokeswoman said they would have no comment, and no funeral plans have been announced.
Authorities are looking for two more suspects. Shabazz was in Mexico to meet with Miguel Suarez, a leader of the Rumec labor movement, who had recently been deported from the United States. The incident started via a dispute over $1200 tab that was possibly a ruse to rob Shabazz.
Reportedly Suarez and Shabazz were separated, but only the latter was beaten with a blunt object that left him with ” fatal skull, jaw and rib fractures” according to the Times. Details are still sketchy, with the bar in question rumored to double as a brothel and that Shabazz was very drunk at the time of the incident (3 a.m.). Suarez was also robbed but managed to somehow escape.
It was Shabazz that infamously started the fire that killed his grandmother, Betty Shabazz, in her Yonkers home in 1997. At the time he was just 12-year-old.
See photos of the two suspect in the gallery.
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Photos: YouTube, AP
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