By Leonard Greene
Source New York Daily News
She didn’t die in the line of duty, but that didn’t seem to matter to the sea of cops who lined the street Thursday outside a Manhattan funeral home where a murdered police officer was mourned days after cops said she was fatally stabbed in her Bronx home by her estranged husband.
The men and women in uniform were just as sad as they would have been if NYPD Transit Officer Arianna Reyes-Gomez had been gunned down in a shootout.
Maybe even sadder because the grieving officers, many of whom have seen domestic violence up close, are usually on the other side of the door.
“We pray for all those coping with this immense loss,” NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Edward Caban tweeted. “May she rest in peace.”
Caban paid his respects, along with white-gloved cops who saluted the hearse that carried her coffin to and away from Riverdale Funeral Home in Inwood.
Mourners and strangers in the crowd craned their necks for a glimpse of the casket draped in the NYPD’s green-and-white flag as it rested on the pallbearers’ shoulders.
A police helicopter flew above.
“Are those all the police officers in America?” asked one passing child.
Reyes-Gomez, 31, was stabbed multiple times early Monday morning in her home on Grand Concourse near E. 156th St., police said.
The slain cop’s 34-year-old estranged husband, Argenis de Jesus Baez Pizano, who lives on Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx, surrendered to police and was later charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.
The murder outraged various sectors of the city, and served as a reminder that domestic violence affects all parts of society.
“My deepest condolences and prayers are with the family of Officer Arianna Reyes-Gomez and her fellow Finest,” tweeted former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton. “A heartbreaking tragedy that highlights the reach of domestic violence across society — an issue the NYPD works hard to combat.”
Surveillance video shows Pizano, 34, confronting Reyes-Gomez in her doorway, and struggling with her as he pushes his way inside, Assistant District Attorney David Birnbaum said at Pizano’s arraignment.
He stabbed her eight times in the breasts, leg, chest and back, and video shows him leaving her home two minutes later, carrying a knife, Birnbaum said. He then confessed to an aunt, who had her son call 911, the prosecutor said.
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