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Mother Of Sean Bell Holds Vigil At 103rd Precinct

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Jan 1, 2007 9:57 pm US/Eastern

Mother Of Sean Bell Holds Vigil At 103rd Precinct

Lack Of Indictments Motivates Valerie Bell To Take Action

CBS 2's Coverage Of The Death Of Sean Bell

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ― The mother of Sean Bell, the groom fatally shot by police on his wedding day late last year, began a 24-hour vigil Monday in front of a police precinct to call attention to the lack of any indictments in the case, her attorney said.

Valerie Bell began her vigil at 4:56 a.m. -- approximately the same time that her son was killed in a barrage of police gunfire outside a strip club -- at the 103rd NYPD precinct at 168-02 P.O. Edward Pyrne Ave. in Queens.

A statement from her attorney said the Bell family plans to hold a press conference at 10 a.m. Tuesday to call attention to the lack of any indictment in the case by Queens District Attorney Richard Brown and the need for a special prosecutor to be appointed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

The vigil also is meant to highlight the "devaluation of the lives of young black men" in the city, the statement from the family's attorney stated.

When 23-year-old Sean Bell was killed by police on Nov. 25, 2006, after celebrating his last night of bachelorhood at Kalua Cabaret, it set off an uproar against the New York Police Department for its use of deadly force, undercover tactics and treatment of minorities.

Two friends were also wounded in the rain of 50 bullets from a group of plainclothes detectives who police later said were staking out the strip club because of alleged criminal activity at the seedy venue. Bell and his friends were unarmed.

The group of detectives involved in the shooting were of mixed races -- black, white and Latino. Bell was black, as are his two friends, now recovering from their injuries. While the city has denied any element of race involved in the incident, family and civil rights activists have claimed otherwise.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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