New York, Feb 2 (AP) For the second time in under a week, police are converging on New York City's St Patrick's Cathedral to pay tribute to a young officer gunned down while answering a call for help in Harlem.

Officer Wilbert Mora's funeral is set for Wednesday morning at the Roman Catholic cathedral where his police partner, Jason Rivera, was eulogised and posthumously promoted to detective on Friday. Both officers were shot Jan 22 while responding to a call about a domestic argument in an apartment.

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Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell called Mora “three times a hero". "For choosing a life of service. For sacrificing his life to protect others. For giving life even in death through organ donation,” she said in announcing his Jan 25 death.

Mora's funeral was taking place hours after an off-duty police officer was shot and wounded as he drove to work in Queens. Police said the officer was shot by one of two men who approached him when he was stopped at a traffic light shortly before 10:30 pm Tuesday. The officer, whose name was not immediately released, was in stable condition at a hospital Wednesday and two men were arrested.

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Mora, 27, joined the New York Police Department in October 2018, after graduating from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. A student of Dominican descent who'd grown up in East Harlem, he was interested in improving relations between police and the neighbourhoods they patrolled, according to one of his professors, Irina Zakirova.

That sensibility endured in his police work. Stephanie McGraw, a domestic violence victims' advocate who got to know Mora while visiting his station house, said last week that he “understood the importance of getting into this very crucial and important role as a police officer — to not only make a difference but to bring some more men and women of colour into the NYPD."

At the same time, Mora made 33 arrests during his few years on the job. Fellow officers recalled him as a humble, helpful colleague who took the bus to work.

His contributions to helping others continued after his death. Mora's organ donations benefited five people, according to the organisation that handled the gift.

The gunman, Lashawn McNeil, 47, died after a third officer shot him as he tried to flee, officials said.

Before last month, the NYPD had last lost an officer in the line of duty when Anastasios Tsakos was hit by a suspected drunken driver in May 2021 at the scene of an earlier wreck.

No on-duty NYPD officer had been fatally shot since September 2019, when Brian Mulkeen was hit by a fellow officer's fire during a struggle with an armed man. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)