The officer who shot and killed a Harlem suspect who fatally gunned down two colleagues in 2022 received on Tuesday the NYPD’s highest award: The Medal of Honor.
Police Commissioner Edward Caban bestowed the medal upon Detective Sumit Sulan during the NYPD’s annual Medal Day ceremony on June 18 at the Police Academy in College Point, Queens. During the celebration of heroics, families of fallen cops were presented with awards leaving many of them in tears.
“This is one of the most significant days of the year for our department, a day to honor our heroes,” Caban said. “Today’s medal recipients have faced incredibly intense life or death situations.”
Sulan is among those who have faced that life-or-death situation. On Jan. 21, 2022, Sulan and Officers Wilbert Mora and Jason Rivera — all three assigned to the 32nd Precinct at the time — responded to a domestic dispute in which a mother was being threatened by her 47-year-old son.
As Mora and Rivera walked down a tight corridor in the Harlem apartment to speak with Lashawn McNeil, the suspect emerged from the back room with a firearm, widely firing, shooting both cops.
Sulan, who was in the living room with McNeil’s mother, immediately jumped into action, shooting McNeil dead. Unfortunately, both of his colleagues would not survive the encounter; Rivera died a short time after the shooting, while Mora succumbed to his injuries days later.
Sulan’s heroics earned him a promotion to detective, while the fallen Mora and Rivera received posthumous promotions to detective at their funerals, held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in January and February 2022.
“Officers Mora and Rivera walk down that hallway and have a person assassinate them in that manner and going to the hospital that evening with then Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and listening to the crowd of the family over and over again saying “My God tell us it is not true,’” Mayor Eric Adams recalled at Tuesday’s ceremony, before turning his attention to Sulan. “He responded in such a heroic fashion.”
Caban placed the Medal of Honor around Sulan’s neck as the detective received a rousing standing ovation from the crowd.
Other honorees included Troy Patterson, who was shot in 1990 and spent three decades in a coma before perishing in 2023 and Krystyna Naprawa, a Queens school crossing guard who was struck and killed by a dump truck driver in 2023.
