Eleanor Bumpurs: In Memoriam
Mrs. Bumpers dwells in vagrancy
Of reason dispossessed
Arrears: three centuries
Plus four months
Her door is triple-locked
A blade that once cut school lunches
All she has
To face Beelzebub
Satan-faced and replicate
With net and trident armed
She lurches
Her worn flesh gravid with resolve
His loins breathe fire
And her hand is gone
Sweet Jesus Savior!
He fires again
And daylight vanishes
Like soapy water down a sinkhole
From news reports:
[1985]
Since the death last October of Eleanor Bumpurs, the 66-year-old Bronx woman shot by a police officer during an eviction dispute, police officials, coroners and community activists have debated whether one or two shots struck Mrs. Bumpurs. The significance of the argument became clear last week when a grand jury indicted the man who fired the gun.
The police were called to Mrs. Bumpurs's apartment by city housing officials, who were trying to evict her for failing to pay her monthly rent of $98.65 for four months. The housing officials said Mrs. Bumpurs had been resisting eviction and might be boiling lye to hurl at them. (The report turned out to be erroneous.) Six officers broke into the apartment. The police said that Officer Stephen Sullivan fired at Mrs. Bumpurs after she lunged twice at another officer with a 10-inch kitchen knife. Officer Sullivan fired his 12- gauge shotgun twice, police officials said, missing the first time.
But the grand jurors decided that both of Officer Sullivan's blasts struck Mrs. Bumpurs, and they voted to indict him for second-degree manslaughter for ''recklessly'' causing her death, in the language of the state penal law. ''In the eyes of the grand jury, he pumped the gun twice and was responsible,'' said Mario Merola, the Bronx District Attorney. A doctor who treated Mrs. Bumpurs immediately after the shooting said he had told the jurors that she was hit in the hand by the first shotgun blast, was thus "totally disarmed" and then was shot a second time in the chest.
Officer Sullivan, a 19-year veteran, pleaded not guilty and was released without bail. Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward suspended him without pay, but changed his mind the following day, restoring Officer Sullivan to the payroll...
[2016]
She wasn't even born when her grandmother, Eleanor Bumpurs, was killed by a cop in 1984, but Shantel Bumpurs still feels the sting of injustice.
The pain resurfaced Tuesday when another elderly Bronx woman, Deborah Danner, was shot to death by a cop in her apartment. Like Bumpurs, Danner was emotionally disturbed, and like Bumpurs, Danner leaves behind a family desperate for answers and accountability.
"My family went through the same troubles, but nothing has changed," said Shantel, 30, a mother of two. "It's shocking after all these years there is no justice."
Danner, 66, was fatally shot by an NYPD sergeant during a Tuesday confrontation inside her apartment during which she threatened officers with a baseball bat.
Authorities said Sgt. Hugh Barry, who fired the fatal shot, mishandled the situation, in part because he used his service weapon instead of a stun gun.
[Wikipedia]
Eleanor Bumpurs was shot dead by police after reportedly lunging at officers with a knife in October 1984.
