Police Brutality / Individual record
Ousmane Zongo
Ousmane Zongo, an unarmed immigrant from Burkina Faso, was shot by NYPD officer Bryan Conroy during an unrelated warehouse operation in May 2003.
- Record ID
- PB-027
- Incident date
- May 22, 2003
- Date of death
- May 22, 2003
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- New York, NY
- Category
- Police shooting
What happened
Ousmane Zongo was working in a Chelsea warehouse when New York City police staged a raid involving other suspected criminal activity on May 22, 2003. Zongo was not a target of the operation. Officer Bryan Conroy confronted and shot him inside the building. His family emphasized that he was an immigrant working to support loved ones and that police should not have killed someone uninvolved in the investigation. Legal proceedings focused on whether the use of deadly force was criminally negligent. The case prompted advocacy by family members and civil-rights supporters against aggressive undercover operations and inadequate accountability for police shootings.
Investigation & findings
Conroy was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in Zongo's death, as reported by WNYC. That conviction, rather than a generic 'outcome unknown' entry, belongs in the case record.
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- Historical source-derived record, pre-2015
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Published historical compilation of Black people killed in police custody (1999–2014)SAGE journal / cited NAACP LDF memorial listing · 2016 · Secondary scholarly source