Slain Philly Police Officer Richard Mendez honored with memorial plaque at FOP headquarters

Nearly six months after Philadelphia Police Officer Richard Mendez was shot and killed in an airport parking lot as he and his partner tried to stop a car theft, police brass, fellow officers, friends, and family gathered Wednesday to dedicate a hero plaque in his memory and decry the crime that took his life.

In a ceremony at FOP headquarters in Northeast Philadelphia, where the plaque will stand, Mendez was recalled as a dedicated, hardworking officer who was devoted to his work and his family.

Speakers included Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel, First Deputy Police Commissioner John Stanford, and the city’s managing director, Adam Thiel.

Mendez’s wife, Alex Carrero, with their daughter Mia Carrero at her side, took to the podium to remember the man she said was their world.

“Many people go through life searching for that one soul, that one person that completes them,” she said, fighting through tears. “This was my husband to me.”

Mendez and his partner, Officer Raul Ortiz, were about to start their shift at Philadelphia International Airport, police said, when they heard glass breaking at the Terminal D parking lot and hurried to the scene.

There, they saw four men trying to break into a car, and at least one of the men began shooting at the officers from behind, police said. Mendez was shot several times in the torso and pronounced dead at a local hospital later that night. Ortiz was shot in the arm and released from a hospital a few days later.

Three men — Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez, 19; Alexander Batista-Polanco, 21; and Hendrick Peña-Fernandez, 21 — have been charged with murder and related crimes in connection with the shooting and are awaiting trial. Prosecutors say Martinez-Fernandez fired the fatal shot.

The fourth man, Jesus Herman Madera Duran, was shot during the struggle, authorities said, and dropped off by his accomplices at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was pronounced dead.

On Wednesday, as FOP president Roosevelt Poplar unveiled the plaque, which joined those honoring 126 other fallen officers, a line of Mendez’s loved ones — led by his wife and daughter — gently laid roses atop the copper memorial adorned with his name and badge number. The plaque is at 11630 Caroline Rd,

As a bugler played “Taps,” the crowd of police officers clad in blue raised their arms in unison to salute their fallen brother. To close the ceremony, a lone bagpiper solemnly marched down the road, away from those gathered to honor and remember Mendez, the sound of “Amazing Grace” fading off into the distance.