Finest salute to 2nd slain hero
Hundreds of New York’s Finest lined the streets of the Big Apple on Wednesday to pay tribute to slain NYPD Officer Wilbert Mora, as his body was moved to an upper Manhattan funeral home in a solemn “dignified transfer” ceremony.
The body of Mora, 27, arrived at the Riverdale Funeral Home with a massive police motorcade after being moved from the city Medical Examiner’s Office, where his remains were transported Tuesday after he was taken off life support.
“The whole world should be hurting right now,” one officer told The Post. “We are hurting, bleeding inside for our colleague.”
A huge phalanx of officers and first responders lined up outside the coroner’s office on 30th Street as Mora’s body was placed into an ambulance, with police choppers flying overhead.
An NYPD flag was draped over the casket.
The somber procession led to the funeral home, where Mayor Adams, a retired NYPD captain, stood silently shoulder-to-shoulder with cops as the body arrived.
“Wilbert Mora truly was New York’s Finest,” Adams later tweeted. “And his death will not be in vain. To the men and women of the NYPD: I know the pain you and your families are feeling today.
“But I also know that your city is standing with you,” the mayor wrote. “And we always will.”
Mora’s body passed just one block from the home of his partner, Jason Rivera, who was killed next to him in the deadly ambush.
Outside the funeral home, Bronx graphic artist Keith DeCesare and his wife, Adriana, held up a poster of St. Michael — the patron saint of slain NYPD officers — and wore Mora’s badge number on his chest.
“We hoped to bring some peace and comfort to the family,” he said. “It is a painful loss for our whole community.”
Mora and Rivera, a 22-year-old newlywed, were shot dead Friday by career criminal Lashawn McNeil, who fired on the cops as they answered a domestic-disturbance call in Harlem.
Rivera died Friday, while Mora remained on life support until Tuesday so that his organs could be harvested to save other lives.
According to the nonprofit LiveOnNY, the lives of five people awaiting heart, liver, kidney and pancreas transplants were saved by Mora.
Leonard Achan, the nonprofit’s president and CEO, said three of the five are New Yorkers and two are from out of state, and received the organs “based on the medical urgency of waiting recipients.”
The Riverdale Funeral Home also handled the arrangements for Rivera.
Both officers will have funeral services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
McNeil was shot by a third officer and died earlier this week.
Rivera and Mora are the first NYPD cops killed in the line of duty since Officer Anastasios Tsakos was struck and killed by a drunken driver on the Long Island Expressway last April.
Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan