NEW YORK — A radical group leader who planned the 1981 Brink’s robbery that left two Nyack, New York, police officers and an armored car guard dead has been released from prison after 37 years, according to a report.
Mutulu Shakur, 72, was released for medical reasons, the Journal News in Westchester County reported Sunday. Bureau of Prisons records confirmed the release.
Shakur, the stepfather of late rapper Tupac Shakur, was last denied for parole in April and in 2016, when he was housed in the federal prison in Victorville, Calif.
In an Oct. 12 hearing, the U.S. Parole Commission ordered his parole release on Friday, citing his deteriorating health. He had been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in 2019, his supporters’ website said.
“The commission finds that your medical condition has significantly deteriorated since your last hearing in April 2022 and, we now find your medical condition renders you so infirm of mind and body that you are no longer physically capable of committing any federal, state or local crime,” the commission said in its findings.
He was ordered not to have contact with his sister, the fugitive Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, or the families of the slain officers.
The website, mutulushakur.com, posted a statement Friday that said, “Mutulu is now with his family. This victory was secured by the steadfast support of his legal team, his family and his community comprised of all of you.”
Shakur was originally sentenced to 60 years in prison. He was arrested in 1986 for masterminding a series of robberies in New York and Connecticut committed by a radical group called “The Family.”
In one of the robberies, Shakur and his accomplices stole $1.6 million from a Brink’s truck on Oct. 20, 1981 at a mall in Rockland County.
During the robbery, Brinks guard Peter Paige was killed. Nyack officers Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O’Grady were killed in an ambush two hours later.
Shakur was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was captured in Los Angeles. He was also accused of assisting in Chesimard’s escape from a New Jersey prison, where she had been held for killing a state trooper in 1973.
Chesimard remains in Cuba.
Shakur’s stepson Tupac Shakur was murdered in 1996.
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