McDonalds mark 25 years since shooting

A bullet from a handgun travels at about 955 miles per hour. In an instant, it can end a life, or change it dramatically. That infinitesimal moment can also change a family, a community and maybe, eventually, change the world.

It is his confidence in that possibility and his strong faith in God that keeps 54-year-old Steven McDonald going strong 25 years after he was shot and paralyzed. That he can feel the tangible impact his story makes on everyone who hears it is a testament to McDonald’s belief in both.

McDonald and his wife, Malverne Mayor Patricia “Patti Ann” McDonald, were joined by their son, Conor, and friends and relatives last week to mark 25 years since the incident that left the NYPD detective gravely wounded.

Only two years on the force at the time, McDonald was working his beat in Central Park on July 12, 1986, questioning a trio of teens about a bicycle theft, when 15-year-old Shavod Jones pulled out a gun and shot McDonald several times in the head and throat. One of the bullets lodged in his spine between the second and third vertebrae, where it remains to this day, and left him a quadriplegic and unable to breathe on his own. At the time of the shooting, Steven and Patti Ann had been married for eight months. She was three months pregnant with Conor, who is now an NYPD officer himself and works a beat in Times Square.

Today, McDonald, who is still an NYPD detective, travels the world to share the tale of his journey. He believes he is serving his purpose the way God intended him to.

“All I am is an instrument of God’s peace in a very difficult and violent world,” he told the Herald in a recent interview. “As hard as it has been for Patti Ann, for my son, for so many family and friends, I know that I did my job that day. I helped others. I saved lives. I wish it could have been a different outcome, but, let me say, being this way and telling my story of how I forgave the boy has touched thousands upon thousands of young and older lives.”