Sean Bell's Parents Endorse Aborn for D.A.

The parents of Sean Bell, an unarmed man whom police fatally shot on the night of his bachelor party in 2006, endorsed Richard Aborn for Manhattan District Attorney today. In a press release put out by the campaign, Bell's parents said they threw their support behind Aborn after learning of his work investigating the NYPD in the 1990s after the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo.

Aborn, a gun control advocate who is considered the dark horse candidate in the D.A. race, was instrumental in getting Congress to pass the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, known as a the Brady Act, in 1993, after more than a decade of opposition by the National Rifle Association. The law mandates background checks on gun buyers and a waiting period on gun purchases (though some of its stronger provisions have been weakened in lawsuits brought by the gun lobby).

Sean Bell was shot in the wee hours of morning on November 25, 2006, as he was pulling out of a popular nightclub in Queens. Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial and were found not guilty.