NJ Cops | Page 60

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.” 60 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ 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