SLAIN Officer Randolph Holder was laid out in his New York Police Department (NYPD) finest — uniform, an officer’s cap and white gloves — at his tearful wake in Queens on Tuesday.
A folded American flag was tucked under the left shoulder of the hero Guyanese native, who was cut down by a drug thug’s bullet while on duty in East Harlem last week.
Hundreds of grieving family members, friends, cops and other supporters gathered for the wake.
The line of blue stretched several blocks at one point, with roughly 750 officers queued up along Merrick Boulevard to pay their respects at the daylong service in Jamaica.
“Why lord? Why lord? Why!” Sobbed a distraught woman who fell to her knees after stepping out of the white Cadillac escorting more than a dozen family members to the church.
The sobbing relative was quickly grabbed by another family member and led indoors.
Holder’s fiancee and high-school sweetheart, Mary Muhammed, arrived with the family wearing a royal-blue suit and black coat.
Cardinal Dolan arrived shortly before the family, speaking to a few of the waiting officers before entering the church to pay his respects.
“It could have been any one of us. This is heart-wrenching. He was our brother, and we’re here to pay our respects to him and his family this morning,” retired NYPD officer Karen Robinson told The Post.
The third-generation cop’s coffin was carried into the AME Cathedral of New York by eight uniformed officers, draped in a green and white NYPD flag.
Around 20 floral arrangements filled the cavernous cathedral, including one depicting a detective shield.
“We came especially for this,” said two unidentified police officers, who flew in from California, to the Post.
The wife and father of Officer Wenjian Liu — shot to death alongside his partner, Rafael Ramos, in December — also came to pay their condolences and were followed soon after by U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro.
Former top cop Ray Kelly stopped by as well and could be seen speaking with Charo Lopez, the sister of Nassau County cop Arthur Lopez who was killed during a traffic stop in 2012.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bratton will pay their respects this afternoon, sources said.
“As some of his teammates have told me, he was the officer that always told them ‘Hold on a minute, look, slow down a little, let’s see what is going on before we go into this situation,’” Police Service Area 5 Captain Rey Mundo told those gathered outside the cathedral.
“They knew he was talented and skilled at what he did, and they respected that and always made sure that he was leading when they had those tough situations,” said Mundo, Holder’s commanding officer.
Community leaders and police had gathered at precincts across the city Monday night and observed 37 minutes of silence — 33 minutes for each year of Holder’s life, and 4 minutes for the four NYPD officers killed this year.
The five-year NYPD veteran was murdered last Tuesday in Harlem after a fleeing suspect shot him in the head. The plainclothes cop and his partner had responded to reports of shots fired and a bicycle stolen at gunpoint.
Suspect Tyrone Howard — whose rap sheet clocks 28 arrests since age 13 — was charged with murder and robbery. The cop-slayer was diverted from a prison sentence in 2014 by a Manhattan judge, instead completing a no-jail rehab programme.
A gun found in the East River Sunday matches the weapon used to kill the 33- year-old cop, authorities said.
Holder will be buried in his hometown of Georgetown, Guyana. (New York Post)
