By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Thurs. July 6, 2017: The New York Police Officer, who city residents were yesterday being urged to keep in their prayers, had roots that ran straight to the Caribbean.
Officer Miosotis Familia was born in Washington Heights, NY but her family is from the Dominican Republic.
The single mother who changed careers from nursing to a cop 12 years ago, was shot while in a NYPD command vehicle with her partner near the corner of Morris Ave and E.183 St. in the Bronx at 12:30 am on July 5th, New York City Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.
Surveillance footage from the scene shows a suspect “purposely” walking up to the command video and firing into the passenger’s side window where Officer Familia was sitting writing in her memo book.
While her partner immediately radioed for assistance, other officers encountered the suspect running, one block away. As the officers confronted the suspect, he drew a revolver and officers fired at him, striking and killing him. A silver revolver was recovered from the scene.
The gunman was later identified as 34-year-old New York City resident Alexander Bonds.
Officer Familia was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where she was pronounced dead about three hours after the shooting.
NYPD Commissioner O’Neill said Officer Familia was “murdered for her uniform and for the responsibility she embraced.
Officer Familia, 48, had been assigned to a plainclothes street crime unit of the 46th Precinct. She was a mother of three children and a former Red Cross worker and nurse at New York University Hospital who lived in Kingsbridge Heights, about two miles north of where she was killed.
Officer Familia “gave her life protecting a neighborhood that had been plagued by gang gun violence,” Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, a union for New York City police officers, said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, at the 46th Precinct where Officer Familia worked, officers said they welcomed “prayers for our beloved sister.”
Meanwhile, police says the man who took her life had been paroled in 2013 after being sentenced to eight years in prison for a 2005 armed robbery in Syracuse. He had other arrests, including one in 2001, when as a teenager he was accused of attacking an officer with brass knuckles.
