The family of an NYPD officer pushed to his death off a Manhattan rooftop 35 years ago pleaded with a parole board on Friday to keep his killer in prison.
Relatives of Anthony Dwyer, who was killed in October 1989, said they don’t put any stake in claims by convicted murderer Eddie Matos that he has found God while serving his 25-years-to-life sentence.
“There’s not much else to do in prison except find God or fight the other prisoners,” said the slain cop’s mother, Marge Dwyer.
With a cane in her left hand and a picture of her son pinned to the lapel of her trench coat, Dwyer and her family delivered victim impact statements at the New York State Parole Board’s Manhattan office opposing Matos’ release.
Matos has been denied parole twice in the last 15 months and will receive another hearing next month.
“My son wasn’t given a second chance or a third chance or a fourth chance,” the outraged mother said.
She was surrounded by a cadre of cops, many of whom weren’t even born when her son was pushed off a Times Square rooftop while chasing an armed robbery suspect.
On Oct. 17, 1989, Dwyer and two other cops responded to a call of an armed robbery of a McDonald’s restaurant on Seventh Avenue and W. 40th Street and saw one of the suspects fleeing towards the roof, according to court records. Dwyer pursued him and when he reached the roof, he was pushed into an air shaft 40 feet deep.
It took cops and firefighters more than 30 minutes to pull him out, and he died a short time later at Bellevue Hospital.
“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry. Hendry said the parole board was “torturing” the Dwyer family by making them relive the tragedy.
“How many chances did our hero Officer Anthony Dwyer get when he was dying at the bottom of an air shaft?” Hendry said. “This is a slap in the face.”