Malikah Shabazz, one of the daughters of former African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X was found dead in her apartment in Brooklyn on Monday, the New York Post reported.
Police said Shabazz, who was 56, was found at around 4.30 pm unresponsive in her home in Brooklyn, and later declared dead.
The cause of death is still unknown and her body has been sent for autopsy.
"The 56-year-old Shabazz was found unconscious and unresponsive inside her home on East 28th Street in Midwood just before 4:30 pm," the police officials told NBC New York.
“I’m deeply saddened by the death of Malikah Shabazz,” Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., said in a post on Twitter.
“My heart goes out to her family, the descendants of Dr Betty Shabazz and Malcolm X. Dr Shabazz was pregnant with Malikah and her twin sister, Malaak when Brother Malcolm was assassinated.”
Shabazz has been arrested before by the police over charges of larceny, forgery, and identity theft.
In 2017, Shabazz and her daughter were arrested in southern Maryland on animal cruelty charges for stealing a rental truck that had injured pit bulls.
In 2011, she pleaded guilty to stealing the identity of an elderly woman, who was a family friend in North Carolina. She used her credit card with bills running to more than $55,000.
Her death comes less than a week after two of Malcolm X's convicted killers were exonerated following decades of doubt about who was responsible for the civil rights icon’s death.
Muhammad Aziz, now 83, and the late Khalil Islam were convicted for the murder of Malcolm X along with a third man Thomas Hagan and sentenced to life imprisonment. They each spent some two decades in jail for killing the leader before being paroled in the 1980s. Islam died in 2009.
(with inputs from sources)
