An New York detective, who was shot over $20 while washing his car in Brooklyn in 1990, has died after spending more than three decades in a coma.
Officer Troy Patterson, a six-year department veteran of the NYPD, was newly engaged and off-duty when he was ambushed by three armed thugs looking for a few bucks outside PS 3 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
During the botched robbery, the then-27-year-old cop was shot in the head with a 38-caliber pistol.
The panicked suspects fled after the shooting, leaving their victim's wallet at the scene. Troy Patterson, a hero cop who had already racked up seven commendations for police work at the time, remained in a vegetative state until he died on Saturday night, sources told the New York Post.
He was just 27 years old at the time of the shooting.
The man, who had been washing his car at a fire hydrant three blocks from his home when shot, was promoted to detective in 2016.
The three suspects - Vincent Robbins, Tracey Clark, and Darien Crawford - were later arrested in the unprovoked shooting.
Robbins, now 53, was convicted of assault and attempted-robbery charges and sentenced to a prison term of five to 15 years. He was released in 2000, state records show.
Clark, the alleged gunman in the shooting, also went to trial in the case, but the outcome of the case is not immediately available, nor are any details of the charges against Crawford.
Despite never regaining consciousness, Troy Patterson was never forgotten by New York's Finest.
"Detective Troy Patterson was a hero of New York City, who inspired hundreds of fellow Detectives to continue his courageous, important crime-fighting work," said Paul DiGiacomo, head of the Detectives' Endowment Association, in a statement Sunday.
"Troy's legacy will forever be one of service and sacrifice. The DEA will ensure he and his family are never forgotten."
NYPD Assistant Chief Judith Harrison had said during a vigil for Troy Patterson in January 2022, "We come here every year to honour his life, to celebrate his life to let his family and to let him know we will not forget."
"The Police department has a saying, 'We will not forget,'" Harrison said.
"But when we gather here, what we do is we put action behind those words. So we're here to celebrate Troy, we're here hoping for a miracle more than 30 years later. We will never forget."
