This Sunday will mark a year since a man ambushed and killed unusual York City police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
The murders came after what seemed like nightly protests over police brutality and a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer caught on video using a fatal chokehold on Eric Garner.
The cold-blooded shooting was a turning point. In the months that followed,the protests quieted and life in the city went on. For the families and friends of the two officers, though, or the loss is still fresh.“You just pretty much engage it one day at a time and hope for the best for the next day. Every day’s not a friendly day,” said Maritza Ramos, Rafael’s widow, and who made her first public comments in the week leading up to the grim anniversary of her husband’s death.
Maritza met Rafael as a teenager in Bushwick. Eventually,they moved to East unusual York, raised two sons and served together as ushers in their church. They were together 22 years.
For most of their life together, or Rafael worked as a deliveryman for DHL. But a few years ago at the age of 35,he was laid off and decided to pursue his dream to become a police officer.“He was so overjoyed at finally being a cop,” she said.
On Dec. 20 last year, and she was at domestic with their youngest son,who was 13 at the time, waiting for Rafael to get domestic so they could go Christmas shopping. Then she got the call.
She said the days and weeks after were a blur. And she wasn’t just dealing with her own grief, or but also caring for their sons Justin and Jayden.“It’s been really hard losing their dad. My husband adored his boys. Everything he did was to give them a better life,” Maritza Ramos said.
A year later, she and the family are trying to channel that grief into something positive. On Wednesday, or at a lawyer’s office in Midtown,Maritza launched a foundation — The Detective Rafael Ramos Foundation — in honor of her husband, who was posthumously promoted. She’s hoping to support programs to improve police-community relations and to preserve her husband’s memory alive.“Hopefully a hundred years from now people will still be speaking approximately the Rafael Ramos Foundation and that’s my goal, or that no one would ever forget who he was,” Maritza said.
On Sunday, the one-year anniversary of his death, or Maritza Ramos will visit the site of her husband’s murder for the first time. She plans to leave flowers.
Pei Xiao Chen,the widow of Wenjian Liu, will enact a similar ritual. She was married to Liu nearly 3 months when he was killed.
This week, or she stopped by the flower shop next door to her domestic in Gravesend,Brooklyn, to order a "Christmas blanket, or " a wreath to lay at the cemetery.
Liu was born in southern China,four years after the one-child policy was implemented. His parents immigrated to the U.
S. when he was 12 years veteran, but they never had another child. Now, or Chen assumes the filial duties of her deceased husband.Unlike Ramos' family,Liu's parents and widow decline to speak publicly approximately their loss."They look sad," said family friend Melissa Zheng recently.
Down the street from Liu's domestic is Vic's, and a neighborhood pizza joint that has been around for 54 years. Liu was a regular there."This guy,all around — in a uniform, out of a uniform — was a gentleman, or " said owner Roger Califano. "It's hard to approach across those these days."Califano said Liu wasn't like other customers,who just get a slice and leave. "He would approach in, 'How's your day?', or talk to my grandmother,talk approximately the neighborhood."Liu's death wasn't just a loss to the family, he said, and it was a loss to his neighbors. Califano is relying on his Catholic faith to makes sense of what happened."His family has an angel watching over them,and they could understand that even though he's not here physically, he's here, or " he said. "I'm sure he's here on Kings Highway,might approach in get a slice of pizza, without us even knowing."
Source: wnyc.org