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I am Not Angry
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The girlfriend of an unarmed man who was killed when police sprayed 50 bullets at his car the day he was to marry her said Monday she's not angry. "I'm really not angry," a subdued Nicole Paultre told CNN interviewer Larry King in her first extensive comments since fiance Sean Bell's killing Nov. 25. "I'm more just trying to be strong. We just want justice.... That's it, and that's what we're praying for and hoping for." Paultre, who wore a badge with a photo of her, Bell and their two young children, spoke haltingly, often with one- or two word answers.
Last week, she told a local hip-hop radio station that the policemen who shot Bell, 23, were murderers.
She said Monday that she thought the officers had used excessive force but she said she didn't blame the whole police department for the actions of a few.
Wearing what would have been her wedding ring, Paultre said she was doing OK after her fiancee's shooting and was "trying to be strong for the girls," who don't understand their dad isn't coming back. The Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader who has spoken for the Bell and Paultre families, appeared on "Larry King Live" with her Monday and said the families wanted Bell's legacy to be the end of police abuse.
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"These are solid people that just want to see fairness and that just want to hope Sean Bell's legacy is that this stops," Sharpton said. "Something has to break the cycle where those police that step out of bounds feel they can get away with it." He said Bell and his friends had been well-behaved at a Queens strip club bachelor party before the shooting and any disturbance reported by witnesses had nothing to do with them.
"If there was some raucous behavior, they were not involved at all," he said. "But even if there had been a raucous party, that doesn't give police the right to come in and become judge, jury and executioner on unarmed men." Police had no comment on Sharpton's and Paultre's remarks Monday night.
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Paultre and Bell were high school sweethearts and had two young daughters, one 3 years old, the other 6 months old. Police shot and killed Bell and wounded two of his friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, moments after they left the strip club.
Five undercover policemen fired a total of 50 shots at the car, hitting it 21 times, in what critics say was an unjustified shooting.
Police say they believed one of the men might have been armed, but a search of the car failed to turn up a gun. Guzman and Benefield remain hospitalized with serious injuries.
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