Detective Steven McDonald of the New York City Police Department who died January 10, 2017, was shot in the line of duty in 1986 and paralyzed from the neck down. Confined to a wheelchair and breathing machine, he forgave his teenage assailant. This is his story, as told in Johann Christoph Arnold’s book Why Forgive?. The program Breaking the Cycle brought McDonald and Arnold together to speak at New York-area school assemblies about nonviolent conflict resolution. They also made three trips to Northern Ireland to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation, together with Father Mychal Judge, who was killed in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. 

When NYPD officer Steven McDonald entered Central Park on the afternoon of July 12, 1986, he had no reason to expect anything out of the ordinary. True, there had been a recent string of bicycle thefts and other petty crimes in the area, and he and his partner, Sergeant Peter King, were on the lookout. But that was a routine – all in a day’s work. Then they came across a cluster of suspicious-looking teens.

When they recognized us as cops, they cut and ran. We chased after them, my partner going in one direction and I in another. I caught up with them about thirty yards away. As I did, I said to them, “Fellas, I’m a police officer. I’d like to talk with you.” Then I asked them what their names were and where they lived. Finally I asked them, “Why are you in the park today?”

While questioning them I noticed a bulge in the pant leg of the youngest boy – it looked like he might have a gun tucked into one of his socks. I bent down to examine it. As I did, I felt someone move over me, and as I looked up, the taller of the three (he turned out to be 15) was pointing a gun at my head. Before I knew what was happening, there was a deafening explosion, the muzzle flashed, and a bullet struck me above my right eye. I remember the reddish-orange flame that jumped from the barrel, the smell of the gunpowder, and the smoke. I fell backward, and the boy shot me a second time, hitting me in the throat. Then, as I lay on the ground, he stood over me and shot me a third time.

I was in pain; I was numb; I knew I was dying, and I didn’t want to die. It was terrifying. My partner was yelling into his police radio: “Ten Thirteen Central! Ten Thirteen!” and when I heard that code, I knew I was in a very bad way. Then I closed my eyes…

Steven doesn’t remember what happened next, but when the first officers to respond arrived on the scene, they found Sergeant King sitting on the ground, covered in Steven’s blood, cradling him in his arms and rocking him back and forth. He was crying. Knowing that every wasted second could be fatal, the men heaved Steven into the back of their RMP and rushed him to the nearest emergency room, at Harlem’s Metropolitan Hospital, twenty blocks away.

Immediately EMT’s, nurses, and doctors went to work. For the next forty-eight hours, he hung between life and death. At one point, Steven’s chief surgeon even told the police commissioner, “He’s not going to make it. Call the family. Tell them to come say goodbye.” But then he turned a corner.

They did the impossible: they saved me, but my wounds were devastating. The bullet that struck my throat had hit my spine, and I couldn’t move my arms or legs, or breathe without a ventilator. In less than a second, I had gone from being an active police officer to an incapable crime victim. I was paralyzed from the neck down.

When the surgeon came into my room to tell me this, my wife, Patti Ann, was there, and he told her I would need to be institutionalized. We had been married just eight months, and Patti Ann, who was 23 at the time, was three months pregnant. She collapsed to the floor, crying uncontrollably. I cried too, though I was locked in my body, and unable to move or to reach out to her.