Malikah Shabazz was arrested Friday night after authorities responded to a call to a Mars Hill home, said Chief Deputy Michael Garrison of the Madison County Sheriff's Office. Investigators found that the 45-year-old had several outstanding warrants from Queens, N.Y., that include charges for grand larceny, forgery and identity theft.
Shabazz is scheduled to appear for an extradition hearing Tuesday.
Sean Devereux, an attorney for Shabazz, said the warrants appear to be from 2009 but that she was never served with the papers. Her attorneys are not sure about the circumstances of the charges. He said prosecutors in New York have known her most recent address in South Carolina, where she owned a home and had a driver's license.
"The notion that she fled New York is really not the case," Devereux said.
Devereux said Shabazz is not fighting extradition and is eager to go to New York and deal with the matter. She's mostly concerned about her 13-year-old daughter, who was in the custody of the local Department of Social Services, Devereux said.
Shabazz is being held at a jail in neighboring Haywood County because Madison County does not have facilities to hold women. Garrison and Devereux said Shabazz is the daughter of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, who is also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. She was born months after Malcolm X was assassinated exactly 46 years ago Monday.
Devereux said she recently moved to the mountains of North Carolina to find a peaceful place to live. Authorities came to the house Friday night as social workers investigated a call that a child was not attending school, he said, noting that Shabazz's daughter is home-schooled.
Shabazz is not facing charges in North Carolina, Garrison said.
