For the rest of her life, Pei Xia "Sanny" Chen, widow of slain NYPD police officer Wenjian Liu, plans to wear his police badge as a pendant because "he is in my heart."
Liu was killed Dec. 20 in a Brooklyn ambush in his patrol car along with his partner, Rafael Ramos, by Muslim gunman Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, 28, leaving Chen, his wife of just two months, alone,
the New York Post reported. Shortly after the murders, Brinsley committed suicide.
In her first sit-down interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Chen said of her husband, "He was proud of himself to be a cop. He said, 'I am here to help people and this is what I do, and I am proud myself.'
"Our family is extremely proud of what he did as a New York City police."
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Liu, 32, a cop for seven years, joined up after being inspired by 9/11, and Chen said, "After 9/11 in 2001, you know, he said, 'I am going to be there and save lives and I am not afraid of dangers, and I am going to be there to help someone. I want to be there to protect the people. They really need help.'"
She called Liu's death a "nightmare," and said that people should respect police because, "they are lifesavers. Being a police officer, they are protectors,"
the New York Daily News reported.
She praised Liu's fellow officers and the Tunnel To Towers Foundation, which helps veteran and first responder families and raised money so that Liu's mortgage could be paid off.
"They are amazing people," she told CNN. "I didn't know them. I really didn't know how I was going to make it, but they're here, all for me."
She said that Liu didn't bring the bad parts of his work home, adding, "Usually he kept that away because he doesn’t want me to worry. He just mostly spoke about the good stuff about (being a) police officer," The Post reported.
President Barack Obama signed the Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu National Blue Alert Act of 2015, which provides alerts to police whenever "there's an active threat against law enforcement," Obama said,
the Post reported.
Liu and Ramos "were serving their community with great honor and dedication and courage, and all of New York grieved and all of the nation grieved," Obama said. "It was a reminder of the incredibly difficult and dangerous work that so many of our law enforcement officers are engaged in every single day," the Post reported.
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