The first female Muslim judge to serve as a US highest judge has been found dead in the Hudson River on Wednesday afternoon, New York’s police said.
According to the Police, they found Ms. Sheila Abdus-Salaam‘s fully clothed body from the water at about 1.45pm on Wednesday and she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Her family identified her after Sheila Abdus-Salaam, a 65-year-old associate judge of New York’s highest court, was found floating off Manhattan’s west side.
Abdus-Salaam, a native of Washington, D.C., became the first African-American woman appointed to the Court of Appeals when Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo named her to the state’s high court in 2013.
Police said her body showed no obvious signs of trauma, and they declined to speculate on the cause of her death.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement, said “Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam was a trailblazing jurist whose life in public service was in pursuit of a fairer and more just New York for all”, Cuomo said of Abdus-Salaam, who was also the state’s first female African-American judge to be appointed to its Court of Appeals, he “was proud to appoint her” and is “deeply saddened by her passing,” Cuomo said in a statement.
Chief Judge Janet DiFiore said her colleague will be “missed deeply”. “Her personal warmth, uncompromising sense of fairness and bright legal mind were an inspiration to all of us who had the good fortune to know her,” she said.
A police investigation is underway in this matter.