NYACK – Mutulu Shakur, one of the 1981 Brinks Armored-truck robbers in Rockland County that left two Nyack police officers and a security guard dead, has been released from prison.
The 72-year-old former Black Liberation Army member was released because the US Parole Commission was found, because of his weak medical condition, he was not physically capable of committing any crime.
Rockland County Executive Ed Day, a retired police officer, was critical of the decision to release Shakur, the stepfather to slain rapper Tupac Shkur, said, “anyone who chooses to commit such an act deserves to spend the rest of their life in prison.” Day said Shakur “should have faced the full consequences for his heinous crime no matter how much time has passed.”
The county executive says Shakur’s release “is disrespectful and horribly insulting to the families of those who have been killed who can only see their loved ones at a gravesite.”
During the Brinks heist, the radical group, called “The Family,” which was comprised of members of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground, shot and killed security guard Peter Paige during the October 21, 1981 at the former Nanuet Mall and wounded Paige’s partner, Joseph Trombino.
The gang stole $1.6 million from the armored truck.
When they reached a roadblock at the thruway, they fired on police killing Nyack Police Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly “Chipper” Brown.
