NEW YORK (AP) - A drug dealer convicted of fatally shooting a New York City police officer during a foot chase in 2015 has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Tyrone Howard appeared Monday in a Manhattan courtroom. The 32-year-old Howard was convicted last month on charges including murder, robbery and weapons possession in the death of 33-year-old Randolph Holder.
On Monday, the slain officer’s father, Randolph Holder Sr., told the judge that his son was a decent man whose life was wrongly cut short.
“I can’t explain the feeling that I have. I just don’t want to call his name, it’s so bad. I just want to call him a beast,” Holder said of Howard, according to the Daily News of New York. “He shouldn’t be on the streets. I think he should be put away for life and throw away the keys so he can never see daylight again.”
Outside court, Holder urged parents to teach their children respect for the police.
“I just want to send a message out there to the mothers and fathers to take care of their children. They deserve every day discipline … manners … so they can be respectful to the police.”
The officer and his partner approached Howard as he was on a stolen bicycle on an East Harlem street in October 2015. Authorities say Howard fled on foot, then pulled out a handgun and shot Holder in the head on a footbridge over the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive.
Authorities say Howard had been involved in a gunfight with drug dealers just before he was confronted by the officers.
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