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Cuban officials on Friday said that Joanne Chesimard, who was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper, has died in Havana decades after breaking out of prison and escaping to the communist island.
Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Chesimard, who was born JoAnne Deborah Byron and was also known as Assata Olugbala Shakur, passed away after living there for years under asylum granted by the Cuban government.
“On September 25, 2025, American citizen Joanne Deborah Byron, ‘Assata Shakur,’ passed away in Havana, Cuba, due to health conditions and advanced age,” the ministry’s statement said.
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Havana, Cuba: JoAnn Chesimard, aka Assata Shakur, holding the manuscript of her autobiography with Old Havana, Cuba, in the background on October 7, 1987. (Ozier Muhammad/Newsday RM via Getty Images)
In 1977, Chesimard was convicted of the murder of state trooper Werner Foerster, who left behind a wife and 3-year-old son, during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973. She escaped from prison in 1979 and had been wanted by the FBI ever since. She was a member of the Black Liberation Army, which the FBI describes as “one of the most violent militant organizations of the 1970s.”
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Shakur was never apprehended following her 1979 prison escape.
On May 2, 2019, the 46th anniversary of Foerster’s slaying, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal called Shakur “a domestic terrorist and nothing more.”
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Fox News Digital has reached out to the FBI and State Department for comment.
