Born on July 16th, 1947 in Jamaica Queens, New York, Joanne Deborah Chesimard, also known as Assata Olugbala Shakur lived with her parents and grandparents, Lula and Frank Hill for three years. After Shakur’s parents divorced in 1950, she spent most of her childhood in Wilmington, North Carolina with a relative until her family moved back to Queens when she was a teenager. During her teenage years she ran away from home numerus amount of times and lived with different strangers until she was taken in by her aunt, Evelyn Williams, who then later became her lawyer. Shakur dropped out of school, but then earned her GED. In the 1960s Shakur attended Borough of Manhattan Community College and then the City College of New York, where she involved …show more content…
On December 21, 1971, Shakur was again named a suspect by NYC police in a hand grenade attack that destroyed a police car and slightly injured two police in Queens. A state alarm was issued a couple days after the attack when a witness identified Shakur by photograph.
On May 2, 1973 Assata Shakur was stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick by a State Trooper for driving with a broken tail light. Assata Shakur and her friend were ordered to put their hands on their laps and not to move. The trooper said that Assata Shakur then reached down to her leg, pulled out a gun, and shot him in the shoulder, after which he retreated to behind his vehicle. The situation escaladed and Shakur’s friend was murdered while Shakur and the Trooper were wounded.
Shakur with gunshot wounds in both arms and in her shoulder went to Middlesex General Hospital with constant surveillance. Shakur was interrogated from her hospital bed, and her medical care was often alleged to have been a poor level of care. Shakur transferred to Roosevelt Hospital in Edison after her lawyers got a court order and then she was transferred to Middlesex County Workhouse not much