Malcolm Shabazz

Malcolm Latif Shabazz (October 8, 1984 – May 9, 2013) was the grandson of civil rights activists Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, through their daughter, Qubilah Shabazz.

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

Malcolm Shabazz was born in Paris on October 8, 1984.

His father, L. A. Bouasba, was an Algerian Muslim whom his mother, Qubilah Shabazz, an African American Quaker and former Muslim, met there while studying.

His mother is of African-American, African-Grenadian, English and Scottish descent.

He was the first male descendant of Malcolm X. According to Malcolm, he never met his father.

Other sources say Malcolm knew his father, but they had little contact with one another.

When Malcolm was a few months old, he and his mother moved to Los Angeles.

A little while later, they moved to New York City and then Philadelphia.

One landlord there remembered frequently having to let young Malcolm into the apartment because his mother was not at home.

Malcolm showed some evidence of disturbance as a child.

As a three-year-old, he reportedly set fire to his shoes.

He brought a knife to school in the third grade.

About the same time, he suffered from delusions and was hospitalized for a short time.

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.

In 1994, Malcolm moved with his mother to Minneapolis.

She was being drawn into a plot to assassinate Louis Farrakhan by an FBI informant, Michael Fitzpatrick.

Malcolm saw in Fitzpatrick the father figure he had never known, calling him "my dad".

In January 1995, Qubilah was charged with trying to hire an assassin to kill Farrakhan.

She accepted a plea agreement with respect to the charges, in which she maintained her innocence but accepted responsibility for her actions.

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.

For the duration of her treatment, ten-year-old Malcolm was sent to live with Betty at her apartment in Yonkers, New York.

Malcolm visited Qubilah in December 1996 in San Antonio, where she was undergoing treatment.

She had remarried, and Malcolm quickly bonded with his stepfather.

The marriage soon ended; Malcolm and his mother began to fight, sometimes physically.

On February 26, 1997, she called the police saying she wanted him committed to a mental hospital.

After a brief stay, Malcolm was released.

In April, he called the police and reported that they had been in a fight.

His mother said she was going to place him in foster care, but sent Malcolm back to New York on April 26 to live with his grandmother instead.

On June 1, 1997, Malcolm Shabazz, then twelve years of age, started a fire in Betty Shabazz's apartment.

She suffered burns over 80 percent of her body.

The police found Malcolm wandering the streets, barefoot and reeking of gasoline.

Betty Shabazz died of her injuries on June 23, 1997.

At a hearing, experts described Malcolm as psychotic and schizophrenic.

He was also described as "brilliant but disturbed."

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.'' Family Court cases in the state were frequently closed to protect children in sensitive cases, though the judge's decision in the Shabazz case came two weeks after the state's Chief Judge announced new rules to keep Family Court cases open to the public.

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

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.

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.

He was murdered in Mexico on May 9, 2013, at the age of 28.