Hamza ‘Travis’ Nagdy BLM activist who helped lead Louisville march over Breonna Taylor’s shooting death shot dead. No arrests.
A ‘troubled’ Kentucky Black Lives Matter activist who helped lead Breonna Taylor protests in his hometown of Louisville has been shot dead, according to reports.
Hamza ‘Travis’ Nagdy — who often led marches while preaching through a megaphone — was gunned down just before 12:30 a.m. Monday near the University of Louisville campus, the Courier Journal reports.
The 21-year-old activist was rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police have released few details about the shooting. It remained unclear if Hamza Nagdy‘s shooting death was linked to protests.
Fellow protesters put up memorials for Nagdy in the city, while an online fundraiser started by his sister had raised almost $30,000 by Wednesday afternoon — twice the target to cover funeral costs.
‘He was an inspirational leader,’ his sister, Sarah Nagdy, wrote on the fundraiser, calling him ‘an avid activist for Black Lives Matter.’
Troubled upbringing
Perhaps providing clues as to his shooting death, Nagdy previously told of his upbringing as ‘a screwed up little kid’ who spent time in foster homes and then jail before finding his calling with the protest movement over Taylor’s police shooting death in March.
‘I’m an ex-foster kid, I’m a felon and I don’t have my GED,’ he told the Courier Journal last month.
But with protesters and activists galvanizing back in March over Breonna Taylor’s shooting death at the hands of police, Hamza rose to the occasion and became a notable standout and eventual activist leader.
‘I spent three years or four years, not consecutively, incarcerated. And next week I’m flying to New York with Until Freedom. I’m having lunch with a state representative. I got people asking me to lead marches,’ he told of his apparent transformation.
But then there was this ominous admission too: ‘I told them two months before the movement, I was the closest I had ever been to committing suicide,” the 21-year-old recounted to The Courier Journal in October. ‘And I could’ve just not been here, straight up, I could’ve just not been here.’
Nagdy also told the Associated Press that his background proved that ‘it doesn’t matter where you came from, because you’re here right now, you’re in this movement.’
Antonio T-Made Taylor, a friend and mentor to Nagdy, called him irreplaceable.
‘Travis really believed he could help change systemic racism,’ Taylor said. ‘He believed he could be a big part of that change.’
Adding, ‘If you ever needed to see hope in a young man, you could look at Travis and see it. … He was inspiring, he was insightful, he was encouraging. He was so willing to learn. He was just a beacon of hope. Him and his megaphone.’
The shooting death of Hamza “Travis” Nagdy marks the 145th homicide in Louisville this year. Homicides which continue to disproportionately afflict the African American community.
Louisville police continue to investigate. No arrests have been made.
