‘Trailblazing’ judge found dead in river
NEW YORK — Family tragedy surrounded Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam. About three years ago, law enforcement officials said, her brother killed himself. Last year around this time, her mother died.
On Wednesday, after responding to an emergency call, officers with the New York Police Department’s Harbor Unit found the body of AbdusSalaam, the first black woman to serve on New York state’s highest court, in the Hudson River in Harlem with no apparent signs of trauma and no indications of foul play. The police are treating her death as a suicide, although they are investigating.
According to one law enforcement official, AbdusSalaam called her Midtown Manhattan chambers on Tuesday morning to say she would not be coming in because she was not feeling well. When the judge failed to appear on Wednesday, her assistant sent a text to her husband of eight months, who called 911 to report her missing a short time later. Her body was found that afternoon, floating in the river.
Abdus-Salaam was last seen leaving her office on Monday evening, and investigators tracked her to the subway at about 8 p.m., the official said. Investigators found the judge’s cell phone in her apartment, another official said, and the door had been locked with keys from the outside. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
“She was a lovely, genteel lady,” Jonathan Lippman, a former chief judge of New York state, said. “We’re all just shocked. No one has any idea what happened.”
Since 2013, Abdus-Salaam had been one of seven judges on the state Court of Appeals. Before that, she served for about four years as an associate justice on the First Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court, and for 15 years as a state Supreme Court justice in Manhattan. She was previously a lawyer in the New York state attorney general’s office.
Zakiyyah Muhammad, founding director of the Institute of Muslim American Studies, said Abdus-Salaam became the first female Muslim judge in the United States when she started serving on the state Supreme Court in 1994.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement on Wednesday that “Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam was a trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a more fair and more just New York for all.”