Slain NYPD Officer Buried in Native Guyana

Scores of New York City police officers were among hundreds of mourners who stood in the rain Saturday as their slain comrade Randolph Holder Jr. was buried in his native Guyana.

After a service at Georgetown’s main church, Holder was laid to rest with a 21-gun salute at the city’s sprawling cemetery with uniformed NYPD and Guyana police and Guyana President David Granger standing by.

Holder was “a humble man, a true hero of the NYPD, a true hero of Guyana,” said one of the officer’s supervisors, Capt. Reymundo Mundo.

A five-year NYPD veteran, Holder was killed in the line of duty on Oct. 20 while responding to a report of shots fired and a bicycle stolen at gunpoint in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood.

Holder had finished high school in the South American country and then moved to New York to live with his father, who also served in the NYPD.

“He told me that the job was getting scary but this is a risk he had to take,” said Holder’s uncle, Desmond King. “I feared for him.”

This article appeared in print on page 4 of the November 2nd, 2015 edition of Hamodia.