NEW YORK (AP) — Uniformed police and U.S. military service officers lined the streets of Manhattan on Wednesday for the funeral for a U.S. soldier and New York City police detective killed in Afghanistan last week.
NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, Mayor Bill de Blasio and others attended the service for Joseph Lemm at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Lemm’s casket, draped in an American flag, was carried into the storied church on the shoulders of fellow officers.
About 100 police motorcycles lead a caravan along Fifth Avenue as police officers from departments across the state followed.
Lemm, 45, was a technical sergeant in the Air Guard’s 105th Base Security Squadron and a 15-year member of the NYPD. He was killed last Monday when his patrol was attacked by a suicide bomber outside Bagram Air Base.
On Thursday, the remains of Staff Sgt. Louis Bonacasa, 31, of Long Island, will be returned in a ceremony at the F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard base in Westhampton Beach. Bonacasa was also killed in the attack.
___
This story has been corrected to show the remains of second soldier will be returned to the F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard base in Westhampton Beach, not Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh.
