Nearly 10 years after his death, Steven McDonald — the paralyzed NYPD detective who publicly forgave the teenager who shot him and left him in a wheelchair — is being remembered in a new documentary chronicling his remarkable transformation from Central Park shooting victim to a global voice for forgiveness, faith and peace.
Titled “Saint of the City,” the 96-minute film follows McDonald through some of the defining chapters of his life after the shooting, including his rehabilitation in Denver and a pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, where he first prayed for a cure. It also revisits his journey to Northern Ireland, where he comforted survivors of the 1998 Omagh car bombing that killed 29 people and later became involved in peace efforts.
The documentary includes interviews with McDonald’s widow and their son, who is now an NYPD captain, as well as the brother of Shavod Jones, the 15-year-old who shot McDonald.
McDonald was working undercover in Central Park and questioning Jones about a string of bicycle thefts when the teenager pulled out a gun and fired three times. One of the bullets struck McDonald’s spine, paralyzing him from the neck down and leaving him dependent on a ventilator.
A year later, McDonald chose forgiveness. In a letter read publicly by his wife, he forgave the teenager whose actions had permanently changed his life.
Jones served nearly nine years in prison for attempted murder before his release in 1995. Just three days later, he was killed in a crash while riding on the back of a friend’s motorcycle in East Harlem.
McDonald died on Jan. 10, 2017, at age 59 after suffering a heart attack.
The film was written, directed and produced by former Emmy Award-winning reporter Mary Murphy and retired Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Erin Mulvey. It also raises a provocative question at the heart of McDonald’s legacy: why the beloved officer has not been considered for sainthood.
Formal canonization in the Catholic Church typically requires two medical miracles.
But Murphy pointed out that one of the qualities that is supposed to be present “is heroic virtue, and I don’t think I know anyone else that I’ve met in my life that exemplifies that more than Steven McDonald.
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“It’s almost 10 years since Steven’s death, and we don’t hear about any cause for sainthood,” Murphy told The Post. “We’re questioning that. And, you know, we wanted to look into what made him so holy, and what made him so special.”
The film, “isn’t just about what happened” to McDonald, Mulvey added.
“It’s about what he chose to do with it, which is a message that resonates with us all,” said Mulvey, who was touched by McDonald’s story because of her own husband’s death as a result of 9/11 illness.
Watching the movie brought the cop’s widow Patricia McDonald to tears even though she lived through her husband’s ordeal.
“I was praying that he would get up out of that chair, but just watching from the beginning til the end was just, it made me cry, you know, just seeing how young we were, and everything that we went through,” Patricia McDonald told The Post, while weeping.
“But also with that said, all the people that came into our lives that helped us and inspired us and were there with us … and then when Steven passed, just seeing how the city came to say goodbye.”
At his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the police officer’s son, Conor McDonald, a member of the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information’s office, called his father “our saint.”
“My dad always lived a faithful life in the church and he exemplified that after he got shot,” he said.
“So, in regards to sainthood, I just believe in the grace of God,” his son said.
“If people are inspired to create a cause, my dad’s name will happen,” Conor McDonald said. “If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But I think my mother knows, and I know, and our family and friends know, that my dad lived the life of a saint.”
The movie, which was funded in part through the New York City Police Foundation and the Detectives Endowment Association, has not been slated for a wide release. There will be an invitation-only screening in July.
