Kuwasi Balagoon

Kuwasi Balagoon was a defendant in the Panther 21 case in 1969 and a member of the Black Liberation Army. Captured and convicted of various crimes against the State, he spent much of the 1970s in prison, escaping twice. After each escape, he went nderground and resumed BLA activity. He was captured for the last time in December 1981, charged with participating in an armored truck expropriation in West Nyack, New York, on October 21 of that year, an action in which two police officers and a money courier were killed. Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, he died of an AIDS-related illness on December 13, 1986.