LIFE AFTER DEATH
Wife of slain cop gives birth to his baby 2½ yrs. later
NEARLY THREE years after an NYPD officer got his wings, the slain cop has an angel of his own.
The widow of Officer Wenjian Liu gave birth Tuesday to a baby girl after she became pregnant using sperm preserved from her husband. Pei Xia Chen welcomed her 6-pound, 13-ounce bundle of joy into the world around 4:30 a.m. at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell.
Liu’s mother pointed to the sky in tribute to her son and beamed with pride over her granddaughter.
“Her name is Angelina, like an angel, like my son is an angel,” Liu’s mom Xiu Yan Li told the Daily News. “I’m just so happy.”
Liu, 32, and Officer Rafael Ramos, 40, were shot to death on Dec. 20, 2014, as they sat in a marked patrol car in BedfordStuyvesant, Brooklyn. On the night of the shooting, Wenjian Liu’s wife — who also goes by Sanny Liu — requested her husband’s semen be frozen.
Police said the wife had a dream that night during which Liu handed her a baby girl.
“I told my friend, ‘It’s going to be a girl,’” Liu’s wife said Tuesday, according to police. “My friend said, ‘No, you haven’t even checked the sonograms.’ But I was right.”
Experts say that even after a murder, there’s a 24-hour window in which sperm can be collected. If frozen properly, it can last forever. In vitro fertilization — the process used by Chen — has a 70%-80% success rate in women with normal fertility levels.
The first-time mom is eager to tell her daughter that her dad was a New York City hero.
Angelina’s grandmother visited the baby and said the newborn’s face was a perfect blend of her parents.
“She looks like my daughterin-law,” she said via Cantonese translation from Susan Zhuang, chief of staff for Assemblyman William Colton. “But this part, the eyes and the forehead, looks like my son. The top of the face looks like my son. The bottom looks like her mother. The head looks exactly like my son. I see my son in her."
Liu’s father Wei Tang Liu simply smiled and made a gesture as if he was holding a baby in his arms.
Zhuang said Chen kept trying to get pregnant via artificial insemination, but didn’t tell her in-laws she was pregnant.
“She kept trying, but she was worried about them worrying about her,” Zhuang said. “So she didn’t tell them until it was successful.”
Liu and Chen were married just three months before the hero cops were shot to death at the intersection of Myrtle and Tompkins Aves. Liu and Ramos were posthumously promoted to detective.
“We congratulate the Liu family and we welcome the baby into our family with open arms,” said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association.
In 2015, Chen appeared on CNN and talked about her love for Liu and how she wears his shield every day.
“He is my heart,” she said, adding that his murder was “a nightmare.”
On the day of his funeral, she said, “He is my hero.”