NYPD officers remove white suits worn to protect against contaminating evidence during a ground search near the scene where earlier in the morning a gun was recovered from the Harlem River during a round-the-clock investigation, Sunday, October 25, 2015 in New York, following the killing of Officer Randolph Holder on October 20. The weapon is awaiting official testing to confirm whether or not it is the same gun used in the fatal shooting.
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Mullings said Holder was a proponent of community policing and hopes his death will serve as a “catalyst for unification”.
The officers caught up to a man with a bike on a pedestrian overpass that spans FDR Drive and traded gunfire, police said.
Shell cases from the test firing would be compared with discharged cases police recovered on 120th Street next to Holder’s body – in addition to the cases at 102nd Street where the first shots were fired, Aubry said.
Holder’s funeral is scheduled for Wednesday.
There’s no word yet on where the 40-caliber gun came from.
The suspect charged in the murder, Tyrone Howard, is due to appear in court on Tuesday, the same day mourners will gather at a church viewing in the city’s borough of Queens to pay respects to Holder.
A portion of the FDR Drive was closed for almost 12 hours after Holder was killed then periodically shut down in the following days as investigators combed the area – both by land and water – for the weapon.
The gun that police believe was the gun used to kill Officer Holder was found at around 3:00 a.m. Sunday.
Investigators are still determining how or if the men were involved in the events of that night and whether they exchanged fire with Howard.
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That Howard was free at all became a point of contention for city and community leaders who say the tragedy points to a larger problem. New York is one of three states that do not allow potential danger to factor into those decisions, the mayor’s office said.
