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Private burial for slain groom

BY EMERSON CLARRIDGE | Newsday Staff Writer

December 3, 2006

Knoll where Sean Bell was buried. (Pablo Corradi / December 2, 2006)

In Saturday morning's crisp, chilly air, the family and friends of Sean Bell traveled from a Queens funeral home to a Port Washington cemetery to bury him.

Little more than a week ago, they had been looking forward to Bell's Nov. 25 wedding to Nicole Paultre, his high school sweetheart and mother of their two young daughters. Instead, that very morning they were reeling from the news that Bell, 23, had been fatally shot by police on a street in Jamaica after leaving his bachelor party at Kalua Cabaret.

Saturday about 10:15 a.m., more than a dozen vehicles pulled through the gates of Nassau Knolls Cemetery on Port Washington Boulevard and moved slowly toward the cemetery's western border.

A small group of relatives and friends gathered graveside on a small hill to say goodbye to the former high school baseball star for the last time. Reporters were not allowed into the cemetery.

Afterward, bouquets of vibrant flowers completely covered the fresh dirt piled on top of Bell's coffin.

The words "Kalua Club" were written in glittery gold-colored script on a red ribbon tucked amid the flowers. Another ribbon read "Rest in peace."

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown is investigating the shooting of Bell and two friends by five officers near the strip club on 94th Avenue. The other two men, Joseph Guzman, 31, and Trent Benefield, 23, remain hospitalized at Mary Immaculate Hospital.