NEW YORK: An associate judge of the New York States highest court, and the first Muslim judge in the country, Sheila Abdus-Salaam was found dead in the Hudson River yesterday. Reports of a person floating by the shore near West 132nd Street in Upper Manhattan were responded by officers from the New York Police Department's Harbour Unit.
Judge Sheila, 65, was taken to a pier where she was pronounced dead by paramedics. Her body was later identified by her husband. It remains unclear on how long she had been missing. There were no signs of trauma on her body, and a law enforcement official said investigators found no signs of criminality.
Since 2013, the Judge had been one of the seven judges on the State Court of Appeals before which, she served for about four years as an associate justice on the First Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, and for 15 years, as a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan. Governor Andrew M Cuomo released a statement in her honour, calling her a pioneer with an “unshakeable moral compass”. “Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam was a trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a more fair and more just New York for all.”
