NYPD detective shot in the head dies after being in a coma for 33 years

NEW YORK — A New York City police detective who had been in a coma for three decades after sustaining “catastrophic” injuries in a 1990 Brooklyn shooting has died, the police commissioner announced Sunday.

Troy Patterson died Saturday night, NYPD Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell announced the next day. He died in a New Jersey drug rehabilitation center, the Daily News reported.

Patterson was off duty, washing his car, when a 15-year-old shot him in the head and, along with two other men, approached him outside his Bedford-Stuyvesant home and demanded $20 . It was January 16, 1990.

Patterson, then 27, never regained consciousness. He had joined the NYPD seven years earlier, working at Coney Island’s 60th Precinct, and was the father of a 5-year-old boy at the time of the shooting.

His son, who has the same name, told the Daily News a few years ago that he always felt like his father could hear him, heard his voice and felt his presence.

Friends and colleagues held candlelight vigils on the anniversary of the shooting. As recently as last year, participants reported that he was “still trying to get through it”, according to the Daily News.

The 15-year-old shooter and two other suspects, a 20-year-old and a 17-year-old, were arrested after the shooting. All served time for various convictions and have since been released, the newspaper reported.

Patterson was posthumously promoted to the rank of detective. His police station confirmed his death “with a heavy heart” on Twitter. Sewell also offered his condolences.