The widow of slain NYPD officer Jason Rivera ripped Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in her husband’s eulogy at his funeral Friday morning, as she described the gut wrenching moment she found out he’d been killed.
“Although you won’t be here anymore, I want you to live through me. This system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore, not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he’s watching you speak through me right now,” Dominique Luzuriaga told mourners at St. Patrick’s Cathedral as they gave her a standing ovation.
“I’m sure all of our blue family is tired too. But I promise, we promise, that your death won’t be in vain.”
As Luzuriaga delivered the emotionally-charged remarks, Bragg was in the audience listening, law enforcement sources said. He also attended Rivera’s wake Thursday night but his family walked into the back so they didn’t have to sit with him and later in the evening, someone told the embattled DA that the family wouldn’t be coming out until he left.
While Luzuriaga struggled to hold back tears, she recounted the last moments she and Rivera spent together on the day he died and how they’d been fighting before he went into work that afternoon.
“This Friday was different. We had an argument, you know it’s hard being a cop’s wife sometimes. It’s hard being patient when plans were canceled or we would go days without seeing each other,” Luzuriaga, wearing a black peacoat, said.
“We were arguing because I didn’t want you to use your job phone while we were together. You were so mad that you took your Lebron jersey down, gave me your chain and put the lotions I gave you for your ashy hands in the bag and said ‘here take them.’”
Luzuriaga said when the two left Rivera’s apartment, she decided to order an Uber instead of driving with him because she didn’t want to continue arguing.
“You asked me if ‘you are sure that you don’t want me to take you home. It might be the last ride I give you.’ I said ‘no’ and that was probably the biggest mistake I ever made.”
Later that day, Rivera and his partner Officer Wilbert Mora were responding to a domestic violence call in Harlem when they were allegedly ambushed by career criminal Lashawn McNeil and killed.
Moments after, Luzuriaga saw a notification pop up on her Citizen app that showed two cops had been shot in Harlem and said that her “heart dropped.”
“I immediately texted you and asked you, ‘are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay. I know that you’re mad right now but just text me, you’re okay, at least tell me you’re busy.’ I get no response,” Luzuriaga said.
“We used to share locations on Find My iPhone and when I checked yours, I see that you’re at Harlem Hospital. I thought maybe you were sitting on a perp but still, nothing.”
Luzuriaga frantically called and called and started to feel that “something wasn’t right.”
“Then I get a call asking if I’m Jason’s wife, and then I had to rush to the hospital,” she said.
“Walking all those steps seeing everybody staring at me was the scariest moment I’ve experienced. Nobody was telling me anything. Dozens of people were surrounding me and yet I felt alone. I couldn’t believe you left me. Seeing you in a hospital bed wrapped up in sheets, not hearing you when I was talking to you broke me.
“I asked why. I said to you, wake up baby, I’m here. The little bit of hope I had that you would come back to life just to say goodbye or say I love you one more time has left. I was lost. I’m still lost. Today I’m still in this nightmare that I wish I never had.”
As she gathered her composure, Luzuriaga talked about how she met Rivera in elementary school and how she never thought their “innocent childhood love would lead us to marriage.”
“Even when we said ‘I do’, we couldn’t believe we said it. October ninth was the happiest day of our lives. I know I drove you crazy saying I love you so many times that you would stop replying I love you more. But you made me feel alive. You make me feel alive,” Luzuriaga said.
She told the packed church that Rivera “is so happy” that they all came to honor him and the service “is exactly how he would have wanted to be remembered. Like a true hero.”
“You have the whole nation on gridlock and although you won’t be here anymore, I want you to live through me,” she continued.
“I love you until the end of time. We’ll take the watch from here.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was present for the funeral, said she cried as she listened to Luzuriaga’s speech.
“First of all, it was heartbreaking to see the riveting pain that young widow was experiencing… It literally brought me to tears as I was sitting there,” Hochul said during a press conference on Long Island later Thursday.
“It’s still hard to think about what that young woman was going through, her whole life ahead of her and to lose her sweetheart who she had a crush on since they were just in grade school. So her pain was real, it was searing to hear and it’s going to be enduring for a long time and we’re just gonna keep her in our prayers.”
When asked about Luzuriaga’s remarks aimed at him, Bragg responded in a statement that “violence against police officers will never be tolerated.”
“I am grieving and praying for Detective Rivera and Officer Mora today and every day, and my thoughts are with their families and the NYPD,” Bragg said.
“My office will vigorously prosecute cases of violence against police and work to prevent senseless acts like this from ever happening again.”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Bernadette Hogan
