{"id":18948,"date":"2026-04-09T22:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/18948\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T22:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:41:18","slug":"family-of-nj-man-shot-by-nypd-wants-time-with-mamdani-to-talk-about-injuries-police-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/18948\/","title":{"rendered":"Family of NJ man shot by NYPD wants time with Mamdani to talk about injuries, police reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Kishan\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Kishan Patel, pictured after he was shot by an off-duty NYPD officer, has family members who are hoping to speak with Mayor Zohran Mamdani about changing the culture of the NYPD.<\/p>\n

Provided by Ryan Julison<\/p>\n

In the two years since he was shot by a New York Police Department officer, a New Jersey man and his family have had their calls for City Hall to change the way police are trained \u2014 or at least apologize \u2014 go unheeded.<\/p>\n

But now that Kishan Patel, 30, is home after over a year at a specialized care facility in Texas, and that a new mayor has taken Gracie Mansion, his family says they are optimistic that they may get a response.<\/p>\n

Patel has been unable to walk or care for himself since May 2024, when off-duty NYPD officer Hieu Tran shot him in the head during a road rage incident in South New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Patel\u2019s family told amNewYork Law it\u2019s a miracle he survived. But they\u2019re saddled with millions of dollars of debt to cover his medical expenses, including retrofitting their Voorhees, N.J. home to accommodate him and paying for round-the-clock care.<\/p>\n

His family is seeking to recover the money they\u2019ve spent and will have to spend from the city in a federal lawsuit<\/a> filed in Manhattan federal court last year. They\u2019re also asking city leaders to apologize and acknowledge the harm they\u2019ve experienced at the hands of the city\u2019s police \u2014 and they say they\u2019re hopeful that Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s administration will grant those concessions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has reached out to our family, or even acknowledged what happened,\u201d said Dan Gaughan, Patel\u2019s brother-in-law. \u201cWe\u2019d really love for Mamdani to come to our home, hear Kishan\u2019s story and meet Kishan, to see what the family goes through every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Mamdani\u2019s office nor the NYPD responded to questions on whether they\u2019d be open to meeting with Patel\u2019s family and discussing potential police reforms. <\/p>\n

\"\"Kishan Patel before the shooting. Provided by Ryan Julison<\/p>\n

Patel\u2019s family is hoping their advocacy and his case can spur change within the NYPD\u2019s hiring, training and retention practices.<\/p>\n

Tran, who was given a decade-long sentence<\/a> last year after pleading guilty to attempted murder, was a \u201cticking timebomb,\u201d family members and their attorney say. Tran\u2019s supervisors allegedly knew he was suffering from depression, PTSD and alcoholism, but didn\u2019t remove him from the force \u2014instead transferring him to the department\u2019s public information office and allowing him to keep carrying his service gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Tran\u2019s case, it was well known that he was in a spiral and going downhill, and they did nothing about it,\u201d Gaughan said. \u201cThe culture of alcoholism throughout the force results in bad things happening. They arm these officers and are basically setting themselves up for bad things to happen. Tran is a clear example of that, so we\u2019re asking this mayor, knowing who this mayor is, and the police commissioner, to address this case and to address this family.\u201d<\/p>\n

After shooting Patel, Tran left him bleeding in the middle of an intersection and calmly drove away, stopping at a gas station to fill up his tank and driving back to New York. He then went to work the next day and the next two weeks as though nothing had happened. The shooting, and the car crash that resulted from it, injured multiple other people.<\/p>\n

Gaughan said they hoped Mamdani would work to shift the \u201coverall environment of the NYPD\u201d while in office.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to see better hiring, more intense training, background checks and mental health issues and alcohol abuse taken seriously,\u201d Gaughan said. \u201cThis is one of the most important jobs in our country, and we can\u2019t have loose cannons out there because it creates avoidable tragedies like this.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kishan Patel, pictured after he was shot by an off-duty NYPD officer, has family members who are hoping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[3639,4325,3806,14244,8523,553],"class_list":{"0":"post-18948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zohran-mamdani","8":"tag-law","9":"tag-mayor-zohran-mamdani","10":"tag-nypd","11":"tag-police-reform","12":"tag-police-violence","13":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116377163169048671","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}