NEW ORLEANS (AP) – A Black Lives Matter activist has been fatally shot in New Orleans.
Muhiydin Moye, 32, was shot in the thigh about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday and died in a hospital, New Orleans police spokesman Beau Tidwell said Wednesday. The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear.
A police report says an officer answering a call about a gunshot found him on the ground, asking for help near the Treme (truh-MAY) neighborhood and about eight blocks from the French Quarter. The report says a bloody trail to the body circled two blocks, and a bloody bicycle lay across the street.
“No further information on this incident is currently available,” police spokesman Gary Scheets said in an email.
The officer saw a traffic camera and a car repair business’s surveillance camera in the area, according to the police report. Officials did not say if they are seeking to look at any surveillance video.
Moye’s family told South Carolina news outlets he was Black Lives Matter organizer Muhiyidin d’Baha, whose legal name was Muhiyidin Elamin Moye.
Last February, Moye leaped a police barricade in Charleston, South Carolina, and tried to take a protester’s Confederate battle flag.
He was a fearless, kind man whose death is a big loss for Charleston and the Black Lives Matter movement, said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure in the movement. He said they met in 2015, after the highly publicized fatal shooting of Walter Scott by a white North Charleston police officer.
“He was a strong leader who deeply understood the role of community and the power of helping other people recognize that role,” Mckesson said.
Moye was taking a personal trip to New Orleans, niece Camille Weaver told the Post and Courier of Charleston.
She told the newspaper that her uncle was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and grew up in Hollywood, South Carolina, just west of Charleston.
“He loved Charleston and loved fighting for what’s right,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone more committed and hardworking than him. He was an asset to the Charleston community and will be greatly missed.”
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Associated Press reporter Michael Kunzelman contributed from Baton Rouge.
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