Sean Bell (May 18, 1983 – November 25, 2006) was the nephew of the University of Miami basketball coach Frank Haith. As a teenager, he studied acting in Flushing, Queens. He was a pitcher for John Adams High School in Ozone Park. His senior year season ended with an 11-0 record, a 2.30 E.R.A. and 97 strikeouts in 62.2 innings.[citation needed] Bell held odd jobs after the birth of his daughter. His former fiancée, Nicole Paultre Bell, told Larry King that Bell was an electrician by trade and unemployed when the shooting occurred.

The night of the shooting, Bell was holding his bachelor party at Club Kalua in the Jamaica section of Queens, a venue that was being investigated by seven undercover police detectives, as a result of accusations that the owners of the club had been fostering prostitution.

The New York Post reported that, according to an unnamed undercover officer, Guzman had an argument inside the club with a woman and threatened to get a gun. One of Bell's friends was heard to say "yo, get my gun" as they left the scene. Fearing a shooting might occur, African American plain-clothed officer Gescard Isnora followed the men to their car while alerting his backup team, prompting the team to confront Bell and his companions before they could leave the scene. Isnora "held out his badge (by his account), identified himself as a police officer, and ordered the driver to stop.". Instead, Bell accelerated the car and hit Isnora, then hit an unmarked police minivan. By all accounts, Gescard Isnora thought he saw Guzman reach for a gun while in the car, yelled "gun" to other police at the scene, and opened fire on the car. The other officers and detectives joined him in shooting at the car, firing 50 bullets in a few seconds.

A toxicology report showed that Bell was legally intoxicated at the time of the shooting. An attorney for the Bell family said in response to the report, "No matter what his blood-alcohol level was, he's a victim."

Other accounts of the incident conflict with that of the undercover officers. According to Guzman, the detectives never identified themselves while they approached the vehicle with drawn weapons. Another source also told New York Daily News that the officers failed to warn Bell before opening fire and started firing immediately upon leaving their vehicles.

The police officer who initiated the gunfire later said that he saw a fourth man in the car, who fled the scene amid the chaos, possibly in possession of the alleged weapon. Jean Nelson, a friend of Bell, was speculated to have been the fourth man. Although present at the time of the shooting, Nelson denies being in the car or possessing a gun. According to The New York Times, a preliminary police report of the shooting contains

"... no meaningful discussion of a fourth man, a mysterious figure who some in the Police Department have suggested may have been present along with the three men who were shot. None of the witnesses whose accounts are in the report speaks of someone who may have fled — perhaps possessing a gun — and there are no indications that the police at the time were seeking anyone who may have left the scene."

Critics suggest that the scenario was concocted by the police officer in order to justify the shooting. Columnist Juan Gonzalez reported in the New York Daily News that, according to a law enforcement source, in the hours immediately following the incident, there was no mention of a fourth man in the police calls and no search was launched for the potentially armed man. This source thus contradicted initial reports that the police searched the neighborhood for the missing man.

According to Michael Palladino, the head of the detectives union, a man who was working as a janitor in a nearby building while the incident occurred later told the detectives that he had seen a black man fleeing the scene, and that the man had fired a gun, at least once, at the police. The witness further stated that he had then heard the officers shouting "police, police." However, according to ballistic evidence, there was no indication of any other weapon, aside from those of the officers, fired at the scene.

In an interview on Larry King Live, accompanying Bell's former fiancée Nicole Paultre, Al Sharpton stated that according to his conversations with eyewitnesses, none of the three men who were shot mentioned a gun while leaving the club. Sharpton also felt that it would be impossible for the persons in the car to have heard the police from within the car, and that they were likely to fear that they were being car-jacked. Several of the witnesses received payment from Sharpton, and several groups, including the NYPD Detectives union have questioned the ethics of these payments, calling into question the witnesses' credibility, to which Sharpton has replied, "How can [the Detectives Endowment Association] support the detectives and I can't support the victims?"