On the afternoon of April 12, 2015, James M. Fitzpatrick, 48, a male NYPD sergeant from Brooklyn, was discovered inside his Bay Ridge home after suffering a gunshot wound to the head, in what investigators and early reports described as an apparent suicide. His family was in the residence at the time, and the first frantic moments unfolded behind a bedroom door as the neighborhood began to notice sirens, officers rushing in, and the sudden, stunned quiet that follows a catastrophe no one
expects.
Police accounts and contemporaneous reporting placed the incident in the Narrows Avenue area near 71st Street, with his wife finding him in the home during the mid-to-late afternoon; one report gave the time as 3:43 p.m., while others described it as shortly before 4 p.m. He was transported to a nearby hospital—described in reports as Lutheran Medical Center/NYU Lutheran—where he was pronounced dead. Sources also indicated he used his NYPD service weapon, and that he had been out sick from work for several days before the shooting.
In the immediate aftermath, the death was treated as an apparent suicide under investigation rather than a homicide, and there were no public reports of suspects being sought, arrests being made, or criminal charges being filed in connection with the shooting. Early coverage noted that authorities were not initially releasing the officer’s name even as media outlets identified him, underscoring how fresh and sensitive the investigation was in the first days after the incident.
Fitzpatrick’s career and family life quickly became part of the public portrait of what had been lost. Reports described him as assigned to the 84th Precinct and as a longtime member of the department, and his death rippled through both the neighborhood and the precinct he served—another loss carried by colleagues who had already known too much grief.
A published obituary later memorialized him as a proud NYPD sergeant and a devoted family man—husband to Regina father to Kristen and James, and son and brother within a large extended family—while also listing visiting hours and a Mass of Christian Burial in Brooklyn, the kind of formal rituals that try to impose order on a day that shattered it.
