Police, family, friends, and strangers gather to pay their respects at the wake of fallen officer Wilbert Mora at St. Patrick’s cathedral. Mark Santia reports.
What to Know
- Two NYPD officers, Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora, died after they were shot in Harlem on Jan. 21 while responding to a domestic violence call
- A third officer shot the gunman, Lashawn McNeil; McNeil died of his wounds early last week
- Rivera's funeral was held Friday at St. Patrick's Cathedral; Mora's funeral will be held Wednesday at the same location following Tuesday's wake
In another day of mourning for New York City, large crowds once again waited in bitterly cold temperatures in order to grieve as they did last week, this time for a 27-year-old NYPD officer killed in the line of duty.
The public joined friends, family and colleagues from near and far to pay their respects Tuesday to Wilbert Mora, who was gunned down in Harlem along with another officer 11 days ago while responding to a domestic call. The grief comes from those who knew and loved him — and from those just learning about him for the first time, who were so saddened by his murder that they felt compelled to come in person and hopefully send a message to the family.
"During this difficult time, I know it's not easy. All of New York and all around the world, a lot of us are here to support them and praying for them and thinking about them," said Sonya Leon, who came to pay her respects.
The typically busy Fifth Avenue came to a standstill, as a sea of cops were on hand while Mora's casket was brought inside St. Patrick's Cathedral.
The other officer, Jason Rivera, who was posthumously promoted to the rank of detective, died the same night of the shooting.
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Mora was shot in the head and had a bullet lodged in his brain. He was taken off life support at a Manhattan hospital four days after the shooting. His heart, liver, pancreas and both kidneys were donated to others before he passed away, enabling doctors to save five additional lives.
"He was to young to die Both of them was too young to die. A change has to come, this needs to end. Enough is enough," said mourner Rolanda Dixon.
The officer's wake was held in the same cathedral where crowds gathered just three days ago for Rivera's emotional funeral. Mora's funeral will be held Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the same location.
Accused gunman Lashawn McNeil, who was shot by a third officer, died last week.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell announced Mora's death a week ago in a tweet, shortly after he underwent surgery to donate his organs, adding to what she called “incalculable” grief within the department.
Sewell called Mora "3 times a hero. For choosing a life of service. For sacrificing his life to protect others. For giving life even in death through organ donation."
Mora and Rivera “were dedicated, courageous and compassionate officers, loved by many. The pain their families feel is immeasurable. We pray for them; we will be strong for them,” Sewell said in a message after Mora's death.
Mora entered the police academy in October 2018 and was assigned to the Harlem precinct where the shooting happened since November 2019. He made 33 arrests, police records show.
An officer who worked with Mora and Rivera remembered how Mora’s powerful physique — tall and stocky with a football player’s frame — belied how approachable he was.
“He was a very humble young man. He was always happy, always eager to help any way he could,” Officer Keith Hall said Tuesday.
“I just grieve for his family. I’m grieving on my own, but I can only imagine what the family’s feeling,” said Hall, who has collected more than $310,000 in a fundraiser for the slain officers' families.
“The city should be grieving after losing two great people who were great, great individuals who served the community and then paid the ultimate sacrifice. So we all should be heavy hearted right now,” he said.
Irina Zakirova, a professor who taught Mora at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, remembered the officer as an earnest and engaged student.
“He was so certain about becoming a police officer — a good police officer — and he was looking forward to taking the next step for a police career,” she said Tuesday.
“He cared about people and the community,” Zakirova said, adding that he was particularly interested in finding different and innovative ways in improving relationships between police and the neighborhoods they patrolled.
The officers' deaths echoed the 2014 killings of another pair of officers, Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, who were fatally shot by a man who ambushed them as they sat in their patrol car. That was the last time multiple NYPD officers were killed in the same incident; only five such incidents have occurred in the last 20 years, excluding the terror attacks on 9/11.
Auxiliary police officers Yevgeniy Borisovitch and Nicholas Pekearo were gunned down in Greenwich Village on March 14, 2007. The two were chasing a suspect who had just shot and killed a worker inside a pizza restaurant.
In 2004, detectives Patrick Rafferty and Robert Parker were shot and killed after arriving at the scene of a domestic violence suspect attempting to steal a car on Sept. 10. On March 10, 2003, detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin were shot and killed in their car after both were discovered to be police during an undercover drug operation on Staten Island.
Mora and Rivera were the first NYPD officers killed in the line of duty by a gunman since 2017, when Miosotis Familia, 48, was ambushed as she wrote in a notebook in a mobile command post in the Bronx. Two officers killed in 2019 died by friendly fire.
Jason Rivera Remembered
Large crowds turned out for the wake and funeral for the 22-year-old Rivera. His widow was presented with his detective shield during the funeral Friday morning.
"I would say good morning to you all, but in fact it's the worst morning ever," his tearful widow Dominque Luzuriaga said during her heart-rending eulogy of her fallen husband. "Today I'm still in this nightmare I wished I never had.
"Although I gained thousands of blue brothers and sisters, I'm the loneliest without you," she said.
Awash in unimaginable grief and sadness, Luzuriaga described how she and her husband had gotten into an argument the day he was killed. As the couple left Rivera's apartment, she ordered an Uber. Rivera offered to give her a ride, but she declined because she didn't want to keep arguing.
"I said no, and that was probably the biggest mistake I ever made," she said.
Luzuriaga recalled the horror of seeing cellphone alerts about two officers being shot in Harlem. Her worries grew as she texted and called the former elementary school classmate she married this past October, begging him to respond even though she knew he had been angry with her. She got no answer until the call that summoned her to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
"I couldn't believe you left me. Seeing you in a hospital bed wrapped in sheets, not hearing you when I was talking to you, broke me," she said. "I asked why. I said to you, 'Wake up, baby, I'm here.' The little bit of hope I had that you would come back to life just to say goodbye or say 'I love you' one more time has left. I was lost. I'm still lost."
His older brother told an absolutely silent cathedral just how much being a cop meant to Jason Rivera.
"My brother's first love was policing. That was his first love," an emotional Jeffrey Rivera, said. "He would literally wake up in the middle of the night policing. He was obsessed with his career in law enforcement ... My brother had a lot of fears. He was afraid of heights, rats, dogs. He wasn't afraid to die to wear that uniform."
Police filled the pews at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and a sea of blue uniforms stretched for blocks as snow drifted outside the city's iconic church. Mayor Eric Adams, himself a retired NYPD captain, said he saw an echo of himself in the slain officer who joined a department he hoped he could make better.
“He did it for the right reasons — he wanted to make a difference,” said Adams, a Democrat who also sounded a message of support for a department that, like others, has faced criticism amid a national reckoning with policing, race and what public safety should mean.
“There were days when I felt the public did not understand and appreciate the job we were doing, and I want to tell you officers: They do. They do,” Adams said.
“The horror that took their lives is an affront to every decent, caring human being in this city and beyond,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said, telling any criminals in the city to “see the presence in this cathedral — the NYPD will never give up this city.”
After the funeral, Rivera’s casket, draped in a green, white and blue NYPD flag, was taken via funeral procession with family, members of the 32nd Precinct and a police motorcycle entourage to Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York, where Rivera was cremated and laid to rest.
Officers came from near and far to honor Rivera, who was just into his second year on the job. Row after row of uniformed officers, ten deep for blocks and blocks, stood shoulder to shoulder, unflinching in the falling snow for nearly three hours.
The officers listened on loudspeakers as Rivera's family members shared their anguish. Many civilians joined in mourning the slain officer, standing shoulder to shoulder with uniformed officers who wore black sashes over their badges.
There was an incredible show of support from non-police New Yorkers during Thursday's wake as well, from many who waited in the frigid temperatures to say goodbye. Some, like Frank Pena, knew Rivera: He owns the Inwood Pharmacy where Rivera used to work during his college years.
Pena said Rivera was proud of his Dominican roots, and that he loved the city and wanted to serve it.
"Jason was something special. Since the beginning, since I first saw him, he was pure happiness. Willing to help people, always wanting to be a police officer," Pena said. "There was something special, always helping people. Everything. It's really hard to take it."
Marisa Caraballo, a former neighbor of the Rivera family in the heavily Dominican neighborhood, said his mother objected when he told her he wanted to become a police officer. She said it was dangerous, but Rivera insisted and his mom relented.
“She said, ‘OK. I support you,’” Caraballo said.
In an essay describing why he became a police officer, Rivera recalled the injustice of being pulled over in a taxi and seeing officers frisk his brother.
“My perspective on police and the way they police really bothered me,” Rivera wrote. But he said he got interested in becoming a cop himself because he saw the department “pushing hard” to improve community relations.
After his death, Rivera’s widow posted on Instagram that she and her husband were friends since childhood. She shared a message he wrote her in their school days saying he loved her and wanted to marry her.
After their wedding last October, Luzuriaga wrote that Rivera was her “soulmate, best friend and lover from now until the end of time.”
“But now your soul will spend the rest of my days with me, through me, right beside me,” Dominique wrote over a picture of her husband’s police locker. “I love you till the end of time.”
The officers' deaths echoed the 2014 killings of another pair of officers, Wenjian Liu, 32, and Rafael Ramos, 40, who were fatally shot by a man who ambushed them as they sat in their patrol car. That was the last time multiple NYPD officers were killed in the same incident; only five such incidents have occurred in the last 20 years, excluding the terror attacks on 9/11.
Auxiliary police officers Yevgeniy Borisovitch and Nicholas Pekearo were gunned down in Greenwich Village on March 14, 2007. The two were chasing a suspect who had just shot and killed a worker inside a pizza restaurant.
In 2004, detectives Patrick Rafferty and Robert Parker were shot and killed after arriving at the scene of a domestic violence suspect attempting to steal a car on Sept. 10. On March 10, 2003, detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin were shot and killed in their car after both were discovered to be police during an undercover drug operation on Staten Island.
NYPD Shooting Timeline of Events
Rivera, Mora and another uniformed officer responded to a domestic disturbance call around 6:15 p.m. on Jan. 21 on West 135th Street by a mother who said she was fighting with her son, according to police. She did not mention any injuries, or any weapons, on the call.
After officers arrived, they went to a rear bedroom, where McNeil fired multiple times as they approached the door. The man then tried to run from the apartment, but was confronted by the third officer, rookie cop Sumit Sulan, who shot him twice.
In addition to the gun he was firing, sources say another weapon was found under his bed, a privately assembled weapon based on parts purchased and registered in Michigan. The ATF/NYPD Joint Firearms Taskforce was still trying to figure out how the AR-15-type assault weapon got into McNeil's possession, a senior law enforcement official said.
One round was found in the second gun's chamber, law enforcement officials said, along with 19 more in a magazine.
Sources previously said McNeil's mother had told police she was not aware he had guns in the apartment.
According to multiple senior officials with direct knowledge of the investigation, the accused shooter, McNeil, has a history of increasingly rabid belief in anti-government conspiracy theories. Officials are also looking into the possibility that McNeil continued firing after the officers were down, and before he charged down a hallway and was shot himself.
