Killing of Eleanor Bumpurs

Common card · No. 444999

On October 29, 1984, Eleanor Bumpurs was shot and killed by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The police were present to enforce a city-ordered eviction of Bumpurs, an elderly and disabled African American woman, from her New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing unit at 1551 University Avenue (Sedgwick Houses) in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx. In requesting NYPD assistance, NYCHA workers told police that Bumpurs was emotionally disturbed, had threatened to throw boiling lye and was using a knife to resist eviction. When Bumpurs refused to open the door, police broke into her unit. In the struggle to subdue her, one officer fatally shot Bumpurs twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. Bumpurs' shooting, one of several deaths that inflamed racial tensions in New York during the 1980s, led to changes within the NYPD regarding responses to disabled and emotionally volatile persons. Officer Stephen Sullivan, who shot Bumpurs, was indicted on a charge of second-degree...

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