eBay to withdraw Diallo shooting item

From CNN's Muffie Dunn

NEW YORK (CNN) -- eBay on Wednesday said it will remove from its on-line auction site what a seller says is a piece of the door in front of which police fatally shot West African immigrant Amadou Diallo.

The decision follows a request from Diallo's family to remove the item from the site.

Jared November, a white man from the South Bronx, has been asking $41,000 for the piece, which represents $1,000 for each of the 41 bullets four New York City police officers fired at Diallo in the shooting in February 1999.

No bids had been received by midday Tuesday on the item, which was put up for auction on Monday. Bids originally were to be taken until about 9 p.m. EDT May 10.

But eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said the Diallo family sent a letter to eBay asking that it be removed. After speaking with the family's attorney, the auction site agreed to withdraw the item, Pursglove said.

November, 52, told CNN in a telephone interview that the piece of door is about 4 feet high by 6 inches wide, and has graffiti messages on it such as "never again," "RIP" and some vulgarities.

It contains no bullet holes, November said.

November said he salvaged the piece from the trash after hearing that the door had been removed from the apartment building, The Associated Press reported.

November said the attempted sale was his way of calling for a march on Washington to protest racial profiling and for establishing a federal oversight committee to investigate allegations of police misconduct nationwide. He said he hoped such a committee would "shatter the blue wall of silence across the board."

But Anthony Gair, an attorney representing Diallo's mother, Kadiatou, said she considers the posting on eBay "demeaning to the family" and "totally undignified."

Kadiatou Diallo "has no desire to have an object on eBay bought and sold based on this tragedy," Gair said.

On November's plans for a march and a federal oversight committee, Gair said, "Mrs. Diallo has nothing to do with it nor does she want anything to do with it."

November said he had tried to contact the family to set up a meeting.

"If they want it down from eBay, then down it shall come," he said.

Diallo, an unarmed immigrant, was shot in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building by four officers: Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy. They said they mistook Diallo for a rape suspect and opened fire on him when he reached for his wallet. Police said they thought he was reaching for a gun.

The four officers were cleared last year of criminal charges, and an internal affairs panel ruled April 27 that the officers had acted within departmental guidelines.

November, a former cabdriver and shoe shiner, said he joined anti-police protests after Diallo's death. But he said he has also spent time in police stations shining shoes, and he does not consider all officers "hooded thugs" as they are portrayed in a recently unveiled mural by Harlem artist Hulbert Waldroup.

Instead, he sees bad cops as a "small vicious minority."

"This is an American issue. We are all in this together," he said.

November said half the profits from the sale of the door piece were to have gone to the Diallo family and half to a list of organizations he and some friends were compiling.

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