The wake for slain NYPD Officer Wilbert Mora, the second officer fatally shot during a Jan. 21 domestic dispute in a Harlem apartment, has begun Tuesday afternoon.
Mora’s flag draped coffin was carried into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, where thousands of NYPD officers and other mourners are expected to attend the wake from 1 to 8 p.m.
Streets around the church are blocked off and guarded by NYPD officers with automatic weapons and in body armor and helmets.
A funeral Mass at the iconic midtown cathedral is set for 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
A wake and funeral Mass were also held for Mora’s partner, Jason Rivera, 22, at St. Patrick’s last week.
Rivera and Mora, 27, were shot on Jan. 21 while responding to a 911 call from a Harlem woman seeking help with her son, Lashawn McNeil, 47.
Police said McNeil opened fire after Rivera and Mora entered a bedroom at the rear of the apartment to speak to him. A third officer who had responded to the call, Sumit Sulan, shot McNeil, who died from his wounds three days later.
Rivera died that night at Harlem Hospital while Mora died several days later at NYU Langone Medical Center later being put on life support so his organs could be recovered for transplant. The organs later went to five other individuals.
Both officers were Roman Catholic and lived in Manhattan.
“Wilbert is 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. Our heads are bowed & our hearts are heavy,” NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said on Twitter after Mora’s death.
Mora was born in the Dominican Republic and came to the United States at a young age, his family seeking a better life, his friend Rashad Mujumder told Newsday.
Mora attended the High School for Graphic Communication Arts in Manhattan joined the NYPD in 2018 after receiving a bachelor’s degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“He took a lot of pride in being a police officer, especially being a young Hispanic man,” Mujumder said. “He wanted to be someone people could look up to.”
Mora and Rivera were assigned to the 32nd Precinct in Manhattan.
Thousands of people bid farewell last week at St. Patrick’s during a wake on Thursday and a funeral Mass on Friday to Rivera. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams attended both the wake and the funeral.
Sewell also posthumously promoted Rivera to detective first-grade, a tradition for officers who die in the line of duty that typically increases death benefits to their families.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is on Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan and is the seat of the archdiocese, has been the venue of hundreds of funeral Masses for police officers, firefighters and military personnel who died in the line of duty.
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.
