NEW YORK – First female Muslim judge of United States was found dead in New York’s Hudson River on Wednesday, police said.
Sheila Abdus-Salaam, a 65-year-old African-American woman who held charge of associate judge of New York’s high court in 2013, was found floating by the shore near West 132nd Street in Upper Manhattan.
After the report, police reached the scene and pulled Abdus-Salaam’s body from the river and she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo named her to the state’s high court in 2013.
“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,” Cuomo said in a statement.
According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History said Abdus-Salaam was the first Muslim woman to hold a seat of a US judge.
Citing unidentified sources, the New York Post reported that Abdus-Salaam had been reported missing from her home earlier on Wednesday. Attempts to reach her family were unsuccessful.
The deceased received a graduate degree from Barnard College and Columbia Law School and started her law career with East Brooklyn Legal Services and served as a New York state assistant attorney general, according to the Court of Appeals website.
She held a series of judicial posts after being elected to a New York City judgeship in 1991.
