Former Black Panther Is Captured in Alabama

A former Black Panther leader wanted in the fatal shooting of an Atlanta sheriff’s deputy was captured Monday in Alabama when he was spotted in a shed by federal marshals and began firing at them, the FBI said.

Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H. Rap Brown, was arrested in Lowndes County, Ala., west of Montgomery, agent Theodore Jackson said.

Jackson said Al-Amin was spotted about 6:30 p.m. and was arrested about three hours later in Autaugaville, Ala.

Al-Amin was scheduled to make a court appearance in Montgomery today and was expected to be returned to Atlanta.

He was discovered peering out of a shed and began firing at the team of U.S. marshals who had spotted him, Jackson said.

He ran from the shed into the woods, pursued by federal marshals. Shots were fired during the pursuit, Jackson said, but no one was injured.

Montgomery is about 160 miles southwest of Atlanta.

Al-Amin, 56, is accused of fatally shooting deputy Ricky Kinchen and wounding deputy Aldranon English in a shootout Thursday night.

The deputies were trying to serve Al-Amin with an arrest warrant at his Atlanta store.

The warrant was issued after Al-Amin failed to appear in court in January on charges of theft by receiving stolen property and impersonating an officer. Those charges stemmed from an incident in May, in which Al-Amin was allegedly stopped in a stolen car and flashed a badge.

A coalition of national Islamic groups had urged the ex-Black Panther to turn himself in.

In the 1960s Al-Amin was justice minister of the Black Panthers. He once exhorted blacks to arm themselves, saying, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”

In 1967, he was charged with inciting a riot in Cambridge, Md., where he told about 400 blacks: “It’s time for Cambridge to explode, baby. Black folks built America, and if America don’t come around, we’re going to burn America down.”

After the rally, shots were fired between blacks and whites. Al-Amin was wounded in the forehead by a shotgun pellet, and a white police officer was shot in the neck, face and hand. No one was killed. The next morning, a school and two city blocks burned.

In 1995, he was accused of aggravated assault after a man claimed he was shot by Al-Amin. The man later recanted and said he was pressured by authorities to identify Al-Amin as the shooter.

Al-Amin came to Atlanta in 1976 after converting to Islam while serving five years in prison for his role in a robbery that ended in a shootout with New York police. In recent years, he operated a small grocery in Atlanta’s West End.