Fatal Encounters record · Independent third-party dataset
Bilal Dashawn Colbert
April 30, 2001 · Irvington, Essex County
Details as recorded
Every value below is shown exactly as Fatal Encounters recorded it.[1]
- Name as recorded
- Bilal Dashawn Colbert
- Age as recorded
- 29
- Gender as recorded
- Male
- Race as reported
- African-American/Black
- Date of the injury resulting in death
- April 30, 2001
- Location as recorded
- Irvington, Essex County18th Avenue and 22nd Street Irvington NJ 07111 Essex
- Highest level of force as recorded
- Gunshot
Where the dataset places it
The marked point is the dataset's own geocoded location for this record, as recorded. Every other New Jersey record in the dataset is shown in gray. A point on a map is where a death was recorded, not a finding about anyone.
Agencies as recorded
Agency or agencies involved, as recorded: Irvington Police Department
An agency appears here because it appears in the record's as-reported agency field, nothing more. Its presence is not a claim of fault or responsibility.
Department pages (matched by this site at high confidence)
The source's account
Fatal Encounters' description of the incident, verbatim. This is the source project's own third-party narrative, not this site's reporting.
Colbert had the two young daughters of his fiancee loaded up for school when a local officer tried to stop him for stolen plates. Colbert did not stop, or did not stop fast enough. He was fatally shot once in the neck. The killing sparked community protests: the same officer had a similar fatal shooting four years previous, and Irvington had been the site of the near-fatal police beating of Haitian immigrant Max Antoine in 1996.
Source reported by Fatal Encounters: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2001/05/kill-m10.html (external link, as recorded in the dataset).
If you are a family member of the person named here, or represent one, and something in this record is wrong, or you want the record removed, requests go through the corrections page. Every request is checked against the source record.
This is one of 24 New Jersey records the dataset dates to 2001, and one of 118 it holds for Essex County across 2000 to 2021. Browse every New Jersey Fatal Encounters record by year.
Records from the same county and year
- William DeLeon (2001) November 22, 2001
- Richard Hall (2001) August 25, 2001
- Patricia Trammell (2001) July 26, 2001
Questions and answers
What does the Fatal Encounters dataset record about this incident?
Fatal Encounters records that Bilal Dashawn Colbert died on April 30, 2001 in Irvington, Essex County, with "Gunshot" as the highest level of force. Fatal Encounters is an independent, crowdsourced dataset of deaths that occurred during police encounters of any kind; a record is not a finding of fault or misconduct.
Which agency or agencies were recorded as involved?
The record's agency field reads "Irvington Police Department". Presence in that field means the agency appears in the record as reported, nothing more; it is not a claim of fault or responsibility by any officer or agency.
Where did this happen?
The record places the death in Irvington, Essex County, on April 30, 2001. The address as recorded is 18th Avenue and 22nd Street Irvington NJ 07111 Essex.
Sources
- [1]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Row 30314. Derived from the public Fatal Encounters national dataset (coverage 2000-2021; collection ended December 2021), https://fatalencounters.org/. Retrieved July 10, 2026. ↩