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A Cold Case Investigation: The Fatal Shooting of Milton X Scott, 50 Years Later: Scott’s Family, FBI Agents Talk About the Emotional Toll

LOUISIANA WEEKLY — They had been sent to arrest Scott, a Black Muslim, who charged the officers after they kicked in the front door of his home. During the struggle, Hahn shot Scott twice when he thought Scott had taken Wood’s gun only to learn afterward that Scott had picked up Hahn’s blackjack.
The post A Cold Case Investigation: The Fatal Shooting of Milton X Scott, 50 Years Later: Scott’s Family, FBI Agents Talk About the Emotional Toll first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 years ago

August 15, 2023

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By Myracle Lewis, Amelia Gabor and Birdie O’Connell
Contributing Writers, Louisiana Weekly

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part series.

(LSU Manship School News Service) — Beverly Shabazz did not have a job and was seven months pregnant with her second child when her husband, Milton X Scott, was shot and killed outside their home in 1973 by FBI agents attempting to arrest him.

“I was thinking I have these two kids to raise,” she said. “I don’t have any help from their father, and it was a while before I could adjust to the situation.”

Shabazz depended on Social Security benefits for their children and then went back to school so she could work as both a cosmetologist and an elementary school teacher. As they grew up, the children hardly saw her, and they missed the emotional support and stability that their father could have provided.

It was a loss compounded by the fact that the shooting arose from a case of mistaken identity. The FBI agents had thought Scott was an Army deserter, and the fatal battle outside his door would not have happened if they had known he had never been in the Army.

“The toughest day of my life happened before I was even born,” his son, Milton Scott Jr., said recently.

When he was little, Scott said, none of the other children believed him when he said that his father was killed by the FBI before he was born. The mockery so traumatized him that he kept quiet about it until George Floyd was murdered in police custody in 2020, intensifying concerns about Black men killed by law-enforcement officers and the impact on their families.

“I didn’t get to grow up with either parent because my mom always had two jobs, and she was in college,” Shabazz’s daughter, Andrea Grant, said.

Grant, now 52 and a college admissions coordinator, said she and her brother, a businessman in Atlanta, were largely raised by their grandparents.

“I regret that my father never got to meet his grandkids,” Grant said, and “the fact that he will never be able to see all that Milton and I have accomplished.”

Floyd’s death, along with the deaths of others like Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling and Daunte Wright, show how in the years since Scott’s death, officer-involved shootings have continued to haunt Black communities and rupture families.

While some of these cases resulted in discipline or convictions for officers, others – like Scott’s – ended in the officers’ actions being deemed justifiable. Experts say that regardless of the legal outcome, families have to deal with the agony of losing a loved one and often a loss of income, which can compound the pain.

According to Russell Jones, an emeritus professor at Southern University Law Center, these incidents also escalate a distrust of law enforcement and induce resentment.

“The common thread within all of these incidents is that we don’t have that same right that the white society has to protect our homes,” Jones said.

Former FBI agents Delbert Hahn and William Wood also struggled with the aftermath of Scott’s death.

They had been sent to arrest Scott, a Black Muslim, who charged the officers after they kicked in the front door of his home. During the struggle, Hahn shot Scott twice when he thought Scott had taken Wood’s gun only to learn afterward that Scott had picked up Hahn’s blackjack.

Wood recently said that Scott’s shooting caused him to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Twenty years after the shooting, Wood taught a PTSD class at the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, Virginia, and invited Hahn, believing he would benefit from it.

“It became personal for me,” Hahn said in an interview with the LSU Cold Case Project. He said the FBI “stuck me in a position where something awful happened, and they didn’t have to do that.”

Hahn said the workshop helped him because he and Wood had never had an in-depth conversation with each other about the incident.

Multiple investigations

Hours after the shooting, the FBI realized that Scott’s identity had been stolen and found the thief, Calvin Wallace, in prison in California. Wallace had juggled at least five stolen aliases in committing various misdemeanors and felonies.

Wallace told the FBI that he had met Scott when Scott was on a trip to California in the early 1970s. Wallace pried into Scott’s background and learned his date of birth, the name of his parents and his Social Security number. Wallace was able to recite the number to agents, missing only one digit.

Wallace lived a transient life. When a childhood acquaintance, Robert King, saw him more than 20 years ago in San Diego, he said Wallace showed signs of heroin addiction. Wallace, then 82, died last October in a San Diego nursing home.

Black leaders demanded investigations into Scott’s death, which came just eight months after an East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputy had killed two Black students at Southern University.

Emmett Douglas, then the president of the Louisiana NAACP, questioned how two trained FBI agents could not subdue a man weighing less than 180 pounds without shooting him.

Neither of the agents was suspended as federal and state authorities looked into what happened.

J. Stanley Pottinger, then the assistant U.S. general attorney for civil rights, instructed the FBI to conduct a preliminary civil rights investigation.

FBI documents say that the bureau did not request an interview with Shabazz shortly after the shooting because she had seemed hostile.

“Well, I was upset because of the way they treated him. I wanted to tell my story, but I never got the chance to,” Shabazz said recently.

The FBI chose not to talk to many neighbors since the area, bureau documents said, was frequented by Nation of Islam members. Authorities feared that would worsen racial tensions and lead to more confrontations like one on North Boulevard 19 months earlier that led to the death of two police officers and two Black men.

A city sanitation worker gave the FBI a signed statement saying he saw a Black man pushing two white men off the porch of Scott’s house before a car blocked his vision of the fight. Seconds later he heard two shots fired.

Two other sanitation workers and one of Scott’s neighbors only noticed what was happening after the shots rang out, and bureau investigators determined that the agents had shot Scott in self-defense.

On Nov. 19, 1973, an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury also chose not to bring charges against the agents.

One of the jurors, Baton Rouge native George Kilcrease, still believes the agents acted in good faith.

“In hindsight, maybe they could have approached it a little differently, he said, but “all the facts of the case led the jury to conclude that they acted reasonably. If Mr. Scott would’ve been white or Black, I don’t think that played into the FBI’s actions of that day.”

Shabazz’s legal struggles

Shabazz also sought redress in a civil case.

In May 1974, she hired Baton Rouge attorney Walter Dumas, who filed a $1 million lawsuit against the FBI under the Federal Tort Claims Act, claiming that Scott’s death was a “direct and proximate result of the negligence, carelessness, and unlawful conduct.”

Dumas did not respond to a request for comment. Shabazz also hired other lawyers, but the case was eventually dismissed by U.S. District Judge Gordon West, who noted that her complaints continually gave the impression that the FBI agents shot and killed the wrong man.

“This is not so,” he wrote. “They shot and killed the man they intended to shoot and kill. They did not shoot the man because he was a deserter from the Army but because he physically attacked and attempted to destroy the two FBI agents.”

Justice Department officials spoke with Scott’s family in 2020 after Congress encouraged the department to investigate a wider range of cold cases from the civil rights era. But the case was closed again in September 2021.

With the grand jury’s decision not to indict, the failure of Shabazz’s lawsuits in civil court and the FBI’s decision to close its new investigation, the family finds memories of Scott and the opportunity to tell his story as the best way to honor him today.

Shabazz later remarried and still lives in Baton Rouge. Now 75, she said Scott had made her “proud to be Black” and “proud to be a Black woman. I was proud of my Black husband.”

‘I’m sorry for her and her family’

On the day of Scott’s death, FBI agents Hahn and Wood were treated at the hospital for minor injuries. When Hahn returned home, he did not tell his wife anything.

“I remember I had blood on the suit, mostly mine,” he said. “I took it off and stuffed it under the bed. It was there for a year.”

Retired FBI agent Theodore “Ted” Jackson, a Black agent who had investigated the shooting at Southern University months before the Scott shooting, said it is important for law-enforcement officers to talk things out after troubling events, especially a fatal shooting.

They never know what the day will bring, but “they all want to go home to their families” after work, Jackson said.

Hahn, now 89, said he believes the bureau should have performed a thorough background check before assigning the deserter case to him. In fact, the FBI, which had earlier quit checking fingerprints of deserters, quickly returned to that practice after Scott was killed.

Hahn said that the force used on Scott was justified. But he does wish there had been more time for negotiation.

In a recent interview, Wood, Hahn’s partner that day, said: “I still have PTSD from a number of incidents. This is one of the main ones.”

Hahn still lives in Baton Rouge. But he said he is not interested in a sit-down or attempt at reconciliation with the Scott family since it would not change what happened. He also doubts that it would bring Shabazz peace.

“I wasn’t happy that Milton Leon Scott was dead,” Hahn said. “I’m sorry for her and her family. I understand they probably don’t like me. That doesn’t bother me; I don’t expect them to. I’d feel the same way if somebody shot my husband or my father.”

This story was written by Myracle Lewis and reported by Lewis, Amelia Gabor, Birdie O’Connell, McKinley Cobb, Brooke Couvillon, Hannah Rehm and MacKenzie Wallace. A companion video by Maria Pham is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhTThAmpQnY.

This article originally appeared in The Louisiana Weekly.

The post A Cold Case Investigation: The Fatal Shooting of Milton X Scott, 50 Years Later: Scott’s Family, FBI Agents Talk About the Emotional Toll first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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OP-ED: The Dream Cannot be Realized Without Financial Freedom

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Dr. King spent the final chapter of his life pushing the country to face economic injustice. The day before he was tragically assassinated, Dr. King stood with sanitation workers in Memphis to call for economic equality. He helped launch the Poor People’s Campaign because he knew freedom hollowed out by poverty is not freedom at all. Dr. King kept pushing America to match its promises with practical pathways.

Published

5 days ago

January 19, 2026

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By Ben Crump

We honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. each January with speeches, service projects, and by reciting powerful quotes we know by heart.

But too many Black families will spend much of MLK Day the same way they spend most Mondays.

With the gas tank hovering near empty, hoping the car can go until the next paycheck arrives. With a prescription waiting at the pharmacy counter because they cannot afford the cost.

With a paycheck that has to stretch further than what seems possible.

Dr. King understood that true dignity means being able to afford and build a good life. In one of his clearest reminders, he asked what it means to “eat at an integrated lunch counter” if you cannot “buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee.”

That question still carries weight for many. Personal freedom will not be achieved without financial freedom.

Dr. King spent the final chapter of his life pushing the country to face economic injustice. The day before he was tragically assassinated, Dr. King stood with sanitation workers in Memphis to call for economic equality. He helped launch the Poor People’s Campaign because he knew freedom hollowed out by poverty is not freedom at all. Dr. King kept pushing America to match its promises with practical pathways.

That is the part of his legacy we should sit with this MLK Day.

This work has never been more important or needed. The cost of groceries, rent, and childcare have become an increased burden. And many families go from stable to scrambling with just one unexpected expense.

These realities are on display in a recent national survey commissioned by DreamFi, echoing what so many families already feel so deeply. More than one in four respondents told us they used check-cashing services in the past year. This finding makes it clear that too many households still need simpler and more accessible options for moving money.

The survey also shows how unexpected expenses impact families. Only 41% of Black respondents said they could cover a $1,000 emergency, compared with 56% of white respondents. When a tire blows out, when a child gets sick, when hours get cut, the question is not theoretical. The question is immediate and the impact is real.

We must shine a light on this struggle and work to equip families with tools to build better futures. We must recognize Dr. King’s wisdom and acknowledge that financial stability is a civil rights issue, because financial instability limits the ability to have choices.

The survey also found hope that can guide how we move forward.

Black families are not turning away from the idea of building stability. In fact, they are reaching for it. In the survey, 79% of Black respondents said they sought out financial education in the past six months. Ours is a community hungry for tools and a fair shot at creating a better tomorrow.

So, what does it mean to honor Dr. King right now?

It means we get practical.

It means we expand access to clear, trustworthy financial education that respects people’s time and speaks to real solutions. It means we support savings pathways that help families prepare for emergencies before emergencies arrive. It means we encourage options that make routine transactions easier and less costly, so a family is not paying extra simply to manage their own money.

Most of all, it means we stop treating financial instability as normal. Because normal is not the same as acceptable.

Dr. King asked America to make its promises real. The best way to honor him now is to provide opportunities for everyone to achieve Dr. King’s dream.

Ben Crump is a nationally renowned civil rights attorney and founder of Ben Crump Law. Known as “Black America’s attorney general,” he has represented families in some of the most high-profile civil rights cases of our time, including those of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tyre Nichols, and Ahmaud Arbery. He is also co-founder of DreamFi, a financial empowerment platform focused on helping everyday people build stability through practical resources.

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Four Stolen Futures: Will H-E-B Do The Right Thing?

BLACKPRESSUSA – An 18-wheeler carrying H-E-B merchandise struck a disabled car on US 87 near Dalhart, resulting in the deaths of four young Texas women. Dashcam footage shows their hazard lights flashing before impact. As H-E-B points to subsidiary distance, families wait for accountability.

Published

5 days ago

January 18, 2026

Oakland Post

By TotallyRandie
Social Media Correspondent, BlackPressUSA

Eighty thousand pounds of steel doesn’t just collide—it obliterates. While corporate lawyers hide behind the sterile jargon of liability and subsidiaries, four Houston families are left haunted by viral footage of a tragedy that should never have happened. On November 5, 2025, a stretch of US 87 became a crime scene of corporate negligence, claiming four vibrant Texan futures in a heartbeat.

The dashcam footage is a nightmare in real-time. A black Nissan Altima, hazards blinking in a desperate plea for space, crawls along the right lane near Dalhart. The four young women inside did exactly what we are taught to do during an emergency: slowed down and put on hazards. They were then met by an 18-wheeler hauling H-E-B merchandise. The truck plowed into them at full speed—no brakes, no swerve, no mercy.

The lives of Breanna Brantley, Taylor White, Myunique Johnson, and Lakeisha Brown were not just lost; they were stolen. To understand the gravity of this loss, you have to realize these women were just starting their lives.

Breanna Brantley (30): A woman entering the prime of her life, a new chapter of wisdom and growth.
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Taylor White (27): A wanderlust traveler and the “glue” for her younger siblings; she was their primary mother figure.
Myunique Johnson (20): Affectionately known as Mimi. Her life was just starting to bloom
Lakeisha Brown (19): A basketball standout set for Blinn College this spring—the beacon of hope meant to rewrite her family’s financial history.

In Texas, political math often attempts to cap the value of a human life, but the $250,000 ceiling suggested by current tort reform is an insult to these families. Breanna, Taylor, Myunique, and Lakeisha were more than just Black women; they were daughters, sisters, and athletes whose lives were abruptly taken away. They deserved milestones—graduations, weddings, and the simple right to grow old—not to be reduced to an apology for a “tragic loss.”

While the dashcam footage suggests an open-and-shut case, Attorney Rodney Jones of Rodney Jones Law Group P.C. revealed in our exclusive interview that reality is far more tangled. The road to justice could be a long, drawn-out process depending on how HEB decides to handle the case.

“This is a senseless accident that could have easily been prevented,” Jones says. “They had the right to possess that lane, and that truck driver had the responsibility to pay attention”. H-E-B is a Texas institution, but its response has triggered deep public outcry. While issuing an apology, the company quickly distanced itself, claiming the carrier wasn’t a “direct” H-E-B truck—despite hauling H-E-B products and being operated by Parkway, a known H-E-B subsidiary.

The driver, Guadalupe Villarreal, reportedly has a history of speeding and prior rear-end accidents. Jones is firm: “I’m looking strictly at his ability to be behind that 18-wheeler. This is a simple matter of a grossly negligent driver and the companies that put him on the road being held accountable.”

“H-E-B can’t bring them back, but they can make sure this never happens again,” Jones argues. “There is no price for a life, but there must be a price for negligence. It’s time for H-E-B to stop pointing fingers and start vetting their drivers properly to protect the public.”

While the public demands criminal charges, Jones notes that the legal wheel turns slowly. However, in the civil arena, H-E-B’s silence is deafening; the company has yet to contact the families directly.

“We desire a speedy resolution so we don’t have to drag this out,” Jones concluded. “H-E-B is a beloved chain here in Texas. Hopefully, they come to the table to resolve this fast. I feel like the longer they make these families wait for closure, the more it should cost.”

The ball is in H-E-B’s court. Will they live up to the Texas-strong values they advertise, or will they let a legal loophole define their legacy?

Bell @TotallyRandie
Multimedia Correspondent & Digital Creator
BlackPressUsa.Com/TotallyRandie.com /Stylemagazine.com

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Travis Scott Teaches Us How to Give Forward

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE It’s not just about the gift under the tree in December; it’s about the skills, the confidence, and the opportunities provided in the months leading up to it.

Published

1 week ago

January 16, 2026

Oakland Post

By TotallyRandie

The fourth quarter of the year is often dubbed “giving season,” and for good reason. As October fades into November, the cultural zeitgeist shifts toward gratitude and the spirit of the holidays. For most, this means making a yearly donation to a local food bank or participating in a toy drive for the less fortunate. But for Houston’s own Travis Scott, “giving season” isn’t a seasonal trend—it’s a sophisticated, year-round blueprint for community empowerment.

Since launching the Cactus Jack Foundation in November 2020 alongside his sister, Jordan Webster, Scott has moved beyond the traditional celebrity check-writing model. While the world watches his every move on global stages, his foundation has been quietly and consistently pouring into the soil that raised him. Whether it’s supporting SWAC baseball athletes or funding the Waymon Webster Scholarship Fund for HBCU students, the mission is clear: provide the resources for the next generation to not just survive, but to lead.

From the Streets to the Stars

This past fall, the foundation took its most ambitious leap yet. In October 2025, Cactus Jack partnered with Space Center Houston—the official visitor center of NASA Johnson Space Center—to launch a first-of-its-kind STEM incubator.

The program was specifically designed for students within the Houston Independent School District (HISD), many of whom come from underserved communities where a career in aerospace often feels like a light-year away. For eight weeks, these middle schoolers weren’t just reading about science; they were living it.

Through a mix of virtual workshops and hands-on sessions at the Cact.Us Design Center and TXRX Labs, students were paired with actual NASA engineers. They weren’t tasked with busywork; they were challenged to solve real-world problems of space habitation, including:

Lunar Water Filtration: Designing systems to purify water on the moon.
Space Habitats: Creating structures designed for food preservation in extreme environments.
Robotics: Developing rovers capable of navigating uneven lunar terrain.

The Power of Being Present

The program culminated in a private showcase at Space Center Houston this past December. Standing alongside retired NASA astronaut and Chief Science Officer Megan McArthur, Scott watched as HISD students presented high-fidelity prototypes. In that room, the disparity usually associated with these neighborhoods vanished, replaced by the technical language of CAD modeling and systems thinking.

But the work didn’t stop at the laboratory. The 6th Annual “Winter Wonderland Toy Drive” at Texas Southern University took place the very next day, showcasing the foundation’s dual-threat approach to philanthropy. While the STEM program looked toward the future, the toy drive took care of the present, putting smiles on the faces of thousands of Houston families with toys, groceries, and essential goods.

“Opportunities like this are being offered to help enrich our students’ lives and inspire them to pursue careers in fields where they can not only thrive but also bring back solutions to their communities.” — Travis Scott

More Than a Headline

Critics and social media skeptics often tweet that “Travis Scott is everywhere but Houston.” The data and the faces of the students at Space Center Houston suggest otherwise. While his music may be a global export, his legacy is being built brick by brick (and circuit by circuit) in HISD classrooms.

By bridging the gap between hip-hop culture and NASA’s high-tech corridors, the Cactus Jack Foundation is teaching us a vital lesson in giving forward. It’s not just about the gift under the tree in December; it’s about the skills, the confidence, and the “out of this world” opportunities provided in the months leading up to it.

Travis Scott may be a global icon, but in Houston, he’s becoming something much more important: a catalyst for the next generation of innovators.