NEW YORK -- NYPD Officer Wilbert Mora, who was fatally shot along with his partner in a Harlem ambush last month, was being remembered at a St. Patrick’s Cathedral funeral on Wednesday, just days after his partner was laid to rest.
Mora, 27, was shot along with Officer Jason Rivera, 22, who was honored at St. Patrick's Cathedral last Friday.
During her eulogy, NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell posthumously promoted Mora to detective, as she had done for Rivera days before.
“Detectives Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera were gifts we never got to keep,” Sewell said. “That piercing sound you heard on a cold night last week was a wail of a mother whose faith in everything good and fair in this world had been shaken to her soul. I hope the whole city heard her.”
Sewell said the two partners have New Yorkers’ “immeasurable gratitude” for their service and sacrifice.
“An ocean of officers shouldn’t have to line streets for the second time in five days to mourn the appalling loss of a 27-year-old son and brother,” the police commissioner said.
The funeral was held hours after an off-duty NYPD officer was shot and wounded in an attempted robbery in Queens on Tuesday night. The officer was the sixth member of the NYPD shot in the city this year.
Mayor Eric Adams vowed in his eulogy to give the NYPD the resources it needs to combat gun violence, saying it’s “New Yorkers against the killers, and we will not lose.”
“This has been a painful last few weeks, but the pain unites us in this moment,” Adams said. "And in this moment of grief, we will rise to the moment and the purpose to end this senseless killing and build a city of peace out of the ashes of fear.”
Mora’s sister, Karina Mora, and cousin, Claribel Jiminian, also spoke, as did his brother, Wilson Mora, who remembered his sibling as easygoing and loyal.
“Things just seemed to roll off your shoulder with ease,” Wilson Mora said. “People gravitated to you because they could lower their defenses and be themselves around you.”
Mora said the two had “so many plans together” that they would now be unable to do.
“We were supposed to travel and go camping and go on road trips,” he said. “I wanted to experience the adventure with you, because your love for life was infectious.”
Thousands of law enforcement members from across the country attended Mora’s funeral, as they had done last week for Rivera.
Rivera and Mora were fatally wounded by a gunman who ambushed them in a hallway as they responded to a family dispute on W. 135th Street in Harlem on the evening of Jan. 21. Rivera died that night.
Mora was removed from life support last Tuesday. He was an organ donor, and officials said he saved the lives of five people in urgent need of transplants.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan presided over the funeral Mass. He said he hopes the deaths will be a wakeup call to end the violence that has plagued the city since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We’re just weary, we’re tired of the violence, and maybe something good will come out of it, I sure hope so,” Dolan said.
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