PHOTO: The daughters of a tourist who was rescued recently by NYPD detectives from a knife-wielding man in Hollywood sent a handwritten note expressing their gratitude. Photo Courtesy of NYPD
From Russia, with hugs.
Two young sisters last week penned handwritten thank-you notes for a pair of Queens detectives who helped rescue the girls’ father from a knife-wielding homeless man who had already grabbed and stabbed their dad in the neck on the Hollywood Walk of Fame while their family was sightseeing in Los Angeles two weeks ago.
After visiting and thanking the LAPD officers who responded to their family’s ordeal, Nelli and Eva Makrich delivered the letters of gratitude to Detectives Kevin Mulligan and Albert Ramos, veteran cops assigned to the Queens District Attorney’s NYPD Squad.
“…You saved my Dad…I am very grateful to you and the hospital for everything,” Nelli wrote in her note.
“Thanks to you, he is alive now,” Eva added of dad, Michael.
Mulligan and Ramos were in California last week wrapping up the travel details on defendants that were indicted in October in Queens on enterprise corruption and other charges relating to a $32 million gambling ring. On Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 18, the partners stopped for coffee in the courtyard of the Hollywood and Highland Center, just steps from the world-famous TCL Chinese Theatre, when they witnessed a man grab the 32-year-old Russian tourist Makrich and cut him on the right side of his neck with a kitchen knife.
The veteran investigators reached for their weapons and sprang into action.
“Al went to the left, I went to the right,” Mulligan recalled in a New York Daily News report. “The victim came toward me. Al yelled a police command, ‘Get on the ground! Drop the knife!’ Thank God [the perpetrator] complied immediately, and it was over in a matter of seconds.”
Mulligan and Ramos apprehended the knife-wielding man without further bloodshed and held him while calling 911.
“[Mulligan and Ramos’] swift and decisive action almost certainly saved a life,” noted city Police Commissioner Bill Bratton days after the incident. “As I’ve often had the privilege of saying, ‘It’s what we do.’”
LAPD arrested the suspect, identified as 51-year-old Donald Monroe Offerman, a homeless man with numerous arrests in the past and a history of mental illness, Queens DA Richard Brown said.
Makrich was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he was treated for non-life-threatening injuries, according to Brown. No one else at the scene was injured.
“Proud of Detectives Ramos & Mulligan for a job well done,” Bratton said in a tweet.
By Michael V. Cusenza michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
