By Melissa Russo and Tara Guaimano • Published July 30, 2025 • Updated on July 30, 2025 at 9:46 pm

Zohran Mamdani described how he stepped of a flight from Uganda at JFK Airport this morning and headed straight to visit the devastated family of slain NYPD Officer Didarul Islam at their home in the Bronx. Mamdani said the officer’s family, unlike his rivals, did not bring up his past comments critical of police in the aftermath of Monday’s shooting. NBC New York’s Melissa Russo reports.

After stepping off a flight from Uganda at JFK airport Wednesday morning, Zohran Mamdani headed directly to the Bronx, where he met with the devastated family of slain NYPD officer Didarul Islam in their home, News 4 has learned.

A source familiar with the meeting said Mamdani met with the Islam family for almost two hours, including with Islam’s heartbroken father, who was released from the hospital Wednesday morning after learning of his son’s murder and suffering a stroke.

Islam’s parents were preparing their son’s funeral and traditional Muslim burial Thursday and invited Mamdani to attend, an invite which he accepted. Islam received a ceremonial dignified transfer Tuesday from the medical examiner’s office to a mosque in the Bronx.

“They thanked me for coming to their home…They are a family that deserves the support of this city, they deserve the support of our leadership and they deserve to be at the center of this story,” Mamdani said.

Spokespeople for Mayor Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa each said the respective candidates were planning to attend Islam’s funeral as well.

Mamdani discussed the meeting in more detail at a news conference in Manhattan Wednesday afternoon where he was joined by Smith Etienne, the brother of Aland Etienne, the security officer killed in the lobby of 345 Park Avenue during Monday’s mass shooting.

It was Mamdani’s first public appearance following a 10-day trip to his birth country to celebrate his marriage at New York City Hall earlier this year. 

The Democratic nominee has faced questions about his past criticism and calls to “defund” the NYPD, which have been resurfaced by his rivals in the mayor’s race. Earlier on Wednesday, Mayor Eric Adams ripped into Mamdani for his claims that he would cut the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) — the task force that responded to Monday’s deadly mass shooting.

“When you start dismantling the pieces of the law enforcement apparatus that are specifically designed to carry out functions, that is extremely dangerous,” Adams told CNBC’s Squawk Box.

At the press conference, Mamdani said the tweets are old, and suggested that he has grown and evolved since that time. He has never retracted or apologized for any of the previous statements made about the NYPD or law enforcement.

“As I have been over the course of this campaign, I am not defunding the police. I am not running to defund the police,” Mamdani said Wednesday. “Andrew Cuomo is far more comfortable living his life in the past and then attacking tweets of 2020 than running against the campaign that we have been leading.”

During an interview on CNN Tuesday, Andrew Cuomo said Mamdani doesn’t understand the importance of the NYPD. It wasn’t clear if he planned to attend Thursday’s funeral.

source Mamdani meets with NYPD officer Islam’s family post-Uganda trip – NBC New York