1981 Brink's robbery
[1][2] The plan called for the BLA members – including Kuwasi Balagoon, Sekou Odinga, Mtayari Sundiata, Samuel Brown and Mutulu Shakur – to carry out the robbery, with the M19CO members – David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck – to serve as getaway drivers in switchcars.
She waited in a nearby parking lot as her heavily armed accomplices drove a red van to the Nanuet Mall, where a Brink's truck was making a pick-up.
At 3:55 p.m., Brink's guards Peter Paige and Joseph Trombino emerged from the mall carrying bags of money.
[4] After fleeing the scene, the robbers drove to the parking lot where a yellow Honda and the U-Haul truck, operated by members of the May 19 Communist Organization, were waiting.
In a house across the street, Sandra Torgersen, an alert college student, spotted them as they switched vehicles and called the police.
Soon, police officers Edward O'Grady, Waverly Brown, Brian Lennon, and Artie Keenan spotted and pulled over the U-Haul truck, with Boudin in the front seat, along with the yellow Honda at an entrance ramp to the New York State Thruway off New York State Route 59.
The occupants of the U-Haul scattered, some climbing into the yellow Honda, others carjacking nearby motorist Norma Hill while Boudin attempted to flee on foot.
Police traced the license plate on one of the getaway vehicles, a white Buick, to an apartment in East Orange, New Jersey.
Investigation later revealed the apartment was rented by Marilyn Jean Buck, who had been previously arrested for providing weapons to the Black Liberation Army.
Investigation later revealed that the bloody clothing belonged to Buck, who had accidentally shot herself in the leg when she tried to draw her weapon during the shootout with the police.
After the vehicle crashed, the two occupants engaged the police in a gunfight that left Sundiata dead (shot in the neck and face by Detective Irwin Jacobson), and Odinga captured by Officers Alan Cochran, Edward Johnson, and Lawrence DiTusa.
Inside Sundiata's shirt pocket, police found a crushed .38 caliber slug they believe was fired from O'Grady's service weapon.
[8] Because the BLA was known for attempting to break their members out of prison (as in the case of Assata Shakur),[9] massive security precautions were undertaken at the Orange County Surrogate's Court in Goshen, New York.
[8] Throughout the trial, they repeatedly disrupted the proceedings by shouting anti-US slogans, proclaiming to be "at war" with the government and refusing to respect any aspect of the US legal system.
They called the robbery an "expropriation" of funds that was needed to form a new country in a few select southern states that ideally would be populated only by African Americans.
When it came time for the defendants to present their case, they called only one witness, Sekou Odinga, who had already been convicted of multiple bank robberies.
In his view, the theft of money was morally justified because those funds "were robbed through the slave labor that was forced on them and their ancestors".
They remained in the basement holding cells, drinking coffee and railing against what they perceived to be a racist court system.
In December 2016, Andrew Cuomo commuted Clark's sentence to 35 years, citing "exceptional strides in self-development".
[15] Buck was later convicted of multiple charges related to the Brink's robbery and other crimes and sentenced to 50 years in a federal prison.
[1] That trial was prosecuted by Robert S. Litt, while the defendants' lawyers included Chokwe Lumumba and Lynne Stewart.
[1] Ferguson, Baraldini, and Odinga's federal convictions were affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in March 1985.
[23][24] In 2019, Boudin and Gilbert's son, Chesa, who was dropped off to a babysitter before the robbery, was elected District Attorney for the city of San Francisco.
