Detective Sean Mulcahy carries on his father’s legacy as he responds to a homemade bomb attack executed by two Islamist extremists at Gracie’s mansion.
On Saturday, while driving to work in Manhattan, Mulcahy, 51, noticed police vehicles speeding down the West Side Highway and felt a sense of concern about what might be happening.
He received a call from a sergeant on the scene, urging everyone to mobilize, stating, “We’re in a bit of trouble,” which confirmed his worries.
Upon arriving at East 88th Street and East End Avenue, he spotted an officer clad in a bomb suit.
Mulcahy and his partner quickly got the NYPD robot ready. After the bomb was safely removed, others took it for further testing.
Following that, he and the bomb-sniffing dog Tony performed a secondary search of the area.
Interestingly, he kept his two sons, aged 19 and 16, unaware of his presence at the scene.
Mulcahy’s knowledge of this work comes from his father, Dennis Mulcahy, who retired from the same bomb squad in 2022 after 33 years of dedicated service.
The elder Mulcahy, now 82 and originally from Ireland, joined the NYPD in 1989. He recalls working on abortion clinic bomb threats in the 1980s, recalling a chilling moment at a clinic in Queens.
“I lifted one of the seat cushions and found three sticks of dynamite with alarm clocks,” he shared. “We decided to remove the visible power source.”
This approach proved effective—the device did not detonate, earning him the Medal of Valor, one of the department’s highest accolades.
Meanwhile, Maureen Mulcahy, Sean’s sister and daughter of an NYPD lieutenant who retired in 2019, had her own thoughts on the chaos at Gracie’s. “But I grew up watching it with my dad,” she remarked. “We didn’t know much about it until we saw it in the Post.”
