IN MEMORIUM
‘He delivered his duties diligently, with pride’
RANDOLPH HOLDER
End of Watch: Oct. 21, 2015
This is the NYPD Officer and New York City PBA brother law
enforcement lost when Randolph Holder was shot and killed
while on duty in Harlem on Oct. 21.
Holder immigrated to New York about 12 years ago, working a
security job for Toys “R” Us before taking the NYPD exam. The
decorated five-year cop was following in the footsteps of his
grandfather — and then his father — during his days growing up
in Guyana.
“He was following in his father’s footsteps, wanting to make his
father proud,” said his cousin Claude Sultan.
Officer Holder showed a natural affinity for the job, making 125
arrests in five years. Holder was honored with five NYPD citations
for excellent police duty and one for meritorious police duty. At
the time of his death, Holder was working in plainclothes,
patrolling housing projects uptown in Police Service Area 5.
The loss was steeped further in tragedy certainly because the
man charged with killing Holder, Tyrone Howard, had been
arrested 28 times since he was 13, including once in a 2009 shooting that injured a one-year-old. He did time in state prison and
got out of jail and enrolled in a drug program just months before
shooting Holder.
Holder’s father, Randolph Holder Sr., said he wasn’t surprised
when his son put on a cop’s uniform after coming to the city.
“He always wanted to be a policeman,” said the elder Holder.
“That he did. He delivered his duties diligently, with pride.”
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NOVEMBER 2015
Mary Muhammad, Holder’s live-in girlfriend, shared the simple
elegance that made him a brother and friend people gravitated
toward.
“Let’s remember Randy for the great man and loving man he
was,” she said. “He was a great cop and he gave his life in the line
of duty. He was very brave. He was a good man and a good cop.”
Holder’s cousin, Damani Adams, said he was destined to work
in the family business.
“He wanted to be out in the community, around people,”
Adams told the New York Post. “At the end of the day, he was still
out there helping people, saving lives, doing what any good cop
would have done.”
A homemade memorial of flowers and burning candles
appeared outside the East Harlem headquarters of the unit where
Holder was assigned. “#BlueLivesMatter,” read a sign taped to one
bouquet. The NJ State PBA contingent led by President Pat Colligan and Executive Vice-President Marc Kovar came to Holder’s
wake and funeral as part of support that came from officers across
the U.S.
And this leads us to what law enforcement finds in the wake of
Officer Holder’s loss:
Holder is the fourth NYPD cop killed in the line of duty in the
past 10 months — since the tragic Christmastime double murder
of Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. On May 2, Officer
Brian Moore, 25, was mortally wounded in Queens, taking a bullet