Biography
Mtayari Sundiata was Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata, born Samuel Smith on February 18, 1944, and became a citizen of the Republic of New Afrika in 1968 and organized with young people in Ocean Hill–Brownsville. He was imprisoned after a 1970 shootout with police and joined the Black Liberation Army after his release; surviving accounts do not provide the dates needed to calculate that earlier confinement. Authorities sought him after the October 20, 1981 Brink’s robbery in Nyack, New York. Police killed him during a chase and gunfight in Queens on October 23, 1981, before he could be arrested or tried in the Brink’s case.
The newspaper identifies Samuel Smith, twenty-five, as a Brooklyn man arrested after the October 26, 1970 grocery robbery in which officers were wounded. His wife Ibidun Smith sought Panther legal assistance. The report describes arrest, Empire Boulevard station, court, bail first at $10,000 then $65,000, withdrawal of the robbery count after failed identification, and continuing attempted-murder and gun counts. It alleges severe memory loss after police beating. This concerns the existing 1970 case, not the later Brink’s allegations. The Black Panther, December19,1970 volV no25, original PDF page 4. Source: https://washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/1970-12-19-bpp-.pdf#page=4
The memorial identifies Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata with February 18, 1944 birth and October 23, 1981 death, alleging killing by NYPD detective Irwin Jacobson. The death and attribution are retained as the committee’s memorial account, not a fresh custody episode or an assumption that fatal shooting followed completed detention.
Tip of the Iceberg, December 1981 (surviving twelve-page scan), PDF page 6.
