After five days of searching, officials have finally retrieved the firearm used last week to fatally shoot 33-year-old New York Police Department officer Randolph Holder.
Forensic tests Monday confirmed that the weapon was used to kill Holder, the New York Times reported.
Police believe Tyrone Howard, a 30-year-old resident of the East River Houses in Harlem, shot and killed Holder, after the officer responded to a report of shots fired on Oct. 20.
Holder's partner shot back, injuring Howard, who was then arrested. Howard remains hospitalized at Cornell Medical Center and has not yet been charged for the officer's death. Three other men were arrested in connection with the shooting.
The .40-caliber Glock was found at the bottom of the East River at 3 a.m. by Detective John Mortimer of the scuba unit, officials said on Sunday. It was located about 40 feet from the FDR highway — where cops believe the suspect was standing when he tossed it.
The gun is considered an important piece of evidence in the case against Howard. The weapon was still holding 13 bullets when it was retrieved from the water.
Investigators tracked the history of the handgun to a purchase in 2008 in South Carolina, where illegal guns are frequently purchased, law enforcement officials said.
Detectives are still working to determine where the gun was before the 2008 purchase, if it has been used in any other crimes, and how it came to be in New York City.
The NYPD found a gun believed to be the one used to shoot and kill Randolph Holder https://t.co/Jg2SkHs9Gq
Tyrone Howard had a long criminal record, including an arrest in connection to the shooting of an 11-year-old in 2009, police sources told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Howard, who had been arrested 28 times and had spent two stints in jail, was only in the street because he'd been put in a diversion program designed to reduce the number of people in prison.
Bratton, who was scheduled to travel to Washington D.C. to join a conference of police chiefs committed to reducing mass incarceration, said Holder's death was a reminder of the danger that violent criminals pose to society.
"In this climate of letting people out of jail, we need to be selective on who we let out," Bratton said, adding that he believes anyone who uses a gun to commit a crime should be given a harsh prison sentence.
One of Howard's arrests was in connection to a 2009 double shooting in which an 11-year-old and a 78-year-old were injured, a police source said. The source added that several people were arrested in connection to that incident and that it was unclear whether Howard had been the shooter.
Police officials told reporters that, at the time of Holder's death, the NYPD was looking for Howard in connection to a drug-related shooting that took place at the East River Houses on Sep. 1. The officials said the department had searched for Howard "very aggressively," but had been unable to find him.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio also spoke at Wednesday's press conference. He praised Holder, whom he said "represented the best of our immigrant tradition," and criticized opponents of gun control, who he blamed for the "free flow of illegal weapons" that enter the city. As of Wednesday afternoon, police had yet to find the gun used to kill Holder.
De Blasio, a noted progressive, also said that the criminal justice system had failed by allowing Howard back into a diversion program and back into the streets.
Holder was a five-year veteran of the department and was assigned PSA 5, a housing bureau that patrols public housing on the Upper East Side and Harlem.
He was a native of Guyana, where his father and grandfather both served as police officers, Bratton said.
Holder's father, also Randolph Holder, addressed the grieving officers of PSA 5 when he arrived to the hospital, Bratton said.
"His father, who in his time of grief, sought to console the officers of PSA 5," Bratton said. "He's strong enough and brave enough to go in and address them and try to comfort them."
Holder is the fourth New York City police officer to be killed in the line of duty in the last 11 months. Speaking at Wednesday's press conference, Bratton denied there was a pattern in the deaths.
Last December Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down in their patrol car in Brooklyn by Ismaaiyl Brinsley. Then, in May, officer Brian Moore was shot and killed in Queens by 35-year-old Demetrius Blackwell.
CORRECTION
Randolph Holder was from Guyana. An earlier version of this post said he was from Ghana.