One year to the day after a mass shooting in Midtown Manhattan, the NYPD gathered for a memorial ceremony to honor the four people who were killed, among them Detective Didarul Islam. The tribute brought together family, colleagues and community members who came to remember the officer and to reflect on the loss that has stayed with the department over the past year.
The ceremony wrapped up outside the 47th precinct in the Bronx, which had been Detective Islam's home base. Speakers described him as a generous, steady and humble man, and colleagues remembered a person who greeted people with a smile and quietly checked on those around him, telling them he appreciated them.
Islam was 36 years old and had been with the NYPD for three and a half years. At the time of the attack, he was working off duty on a security detail at 345 Park Avenue, the building where the shooting took place, when the gunman walked up and opened fire in the early evening.
The detective was the first of the four people killed in the attack, and a fifth person was critically injured. His death, one year on, remains the center of the department's remembrance, with those who knew him focusing on the way he lived rather than the way he died.
The building at 52nd and Park is where the NFL is headquartered. Investigators have said the gunman wanted to deliver notes claiming he was suffering from CTE, a brain disease linked to repeated head injuries often associated with playing professional sports. He had played college football, and an autopsy later found he suffered from CTE. He made his way to the 33rd floor, where he died by suicide.
For Detective Islam's family, the anniversary is deeply personal. At the time of the shooting, his wife, Jamila, was pregnant with the couple's third child. Their youngest son was born about three weeks after the attack and is now 11 months old, a child who will grow up hearing about the father he never met.
Throughout the ceremony, those who spoke returned to the idea that what stood out most was not how the detective died, but how he lived, with humility, compassion, purpose and service to others. It was that example, they said, that the department and his loved ones intend to carry forward.