Mutulu Shakur (born Jeral Wayne Williams; August 8, 1950 – July 7, 2023) was an African American activist, and a member of the Black Liberation Army who was sentenced to sixty years in prison for his involvement in a 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck in which a guard and two police officers were murdered.
[3] By his late teens, Shakur was politically active with the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and later joined the Republic of New Afrika.
[7] Shakur was one of several Black Liberation Army members to carry out the October 1981 robbery of an armored car in Nanuet, New York.
Aided by the May 19 Communist Organization and former members of the Weather Underground, the BLA crew stole $1.6 million in cash from a Brink's vehicle at the Nanuet Mall.
Soon after, they killed Nyack, New York police officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, who had stopped a getaway vehicle.
[8] Shakur, the alleged ringleader of the group, evaded capture for more than five years and thus was the last one to go on trial on charges related to the robbery.
Under the rules in effect at the time of his offenses, Shakur was due for a mandatory parole determination after serving thirty of his original sixty-year sentence, which came in 2016.