A memorial ceremony was held outside the 46th^tPrecinct stationhouse on July 5 to honor the late NYPD Detective Miosotis Familia, who had been assigned to the 46th Precinct when she was fatally shot by parolee Alexander Bonds on July 5, 2017, while sitting in her police vehicle after completing an overnight shift. Bonds was reported to have had a history of mental illness according to the Detectives’ Endowment Association and had posted on social media about killing police before the incident. They said he was shot by responding police after a foot pursuit.

 

Family members, NYPD representatives, residents, and elected officials gathered outside the 46^th Precinct stationhouse, located on Ryer Avenue in Fordham Heights, on July 5 for the remembrance ceremony. A wall-size mural of Familia was painted on the stationhouse some years ago.

As reported by Norwood News at the time, a street renaming in Familia’s memory was also held on Ryer Avenue and East 181st Street on July 5, 2018, attended by many, including Familia’s mother, Adriana Valoy, and her three children, Genesis Villella, who was 20 when her mother died and twins, Peter and Delilah, who were 12 at the time of her death.

 

According to Blue Lives Matter, after 27 years, two months, and two days on the job, NYPD Detective Vincent Maher returned in November 2020 to the 46th Precinct, where his career started, to sign out for the last time. Before he left, he took some time to go back to East 183rd Street and Creston Avenue in Fordham Heights, where his former partner, Familia, then a police officer, was shot.  Accompanying him on that occasion was Genesis who, prior to that day, had never been at the site where her mother’s life was taken.

 

Familia, a 12-year veteran with the NYPD, a single mother and carer for her elderly mother at the time of her passing, was promoted posthumously to Detective First Grade by Former Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill. She was the first female NYPD officer to die in the line of duty since 9/11, according to Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (A.D 81), who attended the service.