Malcolm Shabazz made headlines for multiple arrests during his life, including setting a fire that killed his grandmother, Betty.

[11] During the early 1990s, Malcolm often stayed with his grandmother Betty and his aunts in New York, while his mother Qubilah lived with various friends.

[13] Under the terms of the agreement, she was required to undergo psychological counseling and treatment for drug and alcohol abuse for a two-year period in order to avoid a prison sentence.

"[10] Despite opposition from both Shabazz's defense attorneys and the state prosecutors, the presiding Family Court judge did not close the case to the press, citing his desire "to preserve the integrity of public proceedings.

[20] Former New York City Mayor David Dinkins and former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton represented Malcolm Shabazz in his Westchester Family Court trial.

[21] At the end of each hearing, Dinkins and Sutton would make a "motion to hug" Shabazz before he was handcuffed, shackled, and led back to detention.

[22] The two lawyers accepted that he started the fire, but argued he intended no real harm to his grandmother; throughout the trial, Dinkins and Sutton tried to arrange an alternative to youth detention that would satisfy their security, therapeutic, and academic standards by visiting locations from North Carolina to Upstate New York.

[22] Shabazz pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months of juvenile detention at Hillcrest Education Center in Pittsfield, MA for manslaughter and arson, with possible annual extensions until his 18th birthday.

[26] Though the teenager was abroad for a single afternoon and did not commit any additional crimes, Westchester County Attorney Alan Scheinkman decided to prosecute him due to the "alarm" the search caused in the local community.

[10]Expressing regret for his actions, Malcolm said he would sit on his jail cot and ask for a sign of forgiveness from his dead grandmother.

[10]In the same interview, Shabazz also dismissed the child psychiatrist's diagnosis of him at his trial that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, saying that he had only "made up" a story about hearing voices in his childhood "to get attention".

[29] In February 2013, Iranian state-controlled Press TV reported that Shabazz had been arrested by the FBI while en route to Iran.

His body, which according to prosecutors had been badly beaten with a rod of some kind, was found in the street in Plaza Garibaldi, a busy tourist spot.

[32] According to New York magazine, a friend who was with Shabazz the night of his death said the beating was related to a dispute over a $1,200 bar tab for drinks and female companionship.

[33] On May 13, David Hernández Cruz and Manuel Alejandro Pérez de Jesús, waiters at a nightclub called The Palace, were arrested in connection with Shabazz's death.

[34] By 2015, Hernandez, Pérez de Jesús, and Juan Dircio Guzmán, the head waiter at The Palace, had been sentenced to — and were serving — terms of 27 years and six months for their roles in the murder.