Crime & Safety

Nearly A Year After Being Shot, Paramus Officer Returns To Work

Newly minted as a detective, Rachel Morgan returned to active duty on Monday

Rachel Morgan ended her long and trying journey back to active duty on the Paramus Police Department on Monday, nearly a year after she was shot on a snowy Parkway onramp.

Morgan declined to speak about her return Monday. It's a moment, however, that she's been thinking about and working towards since she first regained consciousness days after the Super Bowl Sunday shooting, scrawling on a piece of paper to Police Chief Christopher Brock.

“There’s no question. It’s just a matter of when,” . "I belong in that building."

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Morgan was shot twice in the torso by Michael Carmody after she tried to make a traffic stop on Route 17. Carmody fled and spun out on the entrance to the Garden State Parkway.

Morgan was hailed for her grace under fire after she was able to—with two bullets in her and bleeding in the snow—unload 13 shots into Carmody's car door.

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Fragments from the door immobilized him and, drunk with no chance of escape, he shot himself in the head.

"That kind of coolness is extraordinary," Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said last spring. "She is an absolute hero."

Her release from Hackensack University Medical Center two weeks after the shooting was . A Paramus Volunteer Ambulance Corps ambulance shuttled her home, with a parade of police from all over the county trailing behind.

Just days later, Morgan during a ceremony making him chief of the Paramus Police Department. Brock had been acting chief since November 2010, and was surprised by the appearance of Morgan, who needed her fellow officers to help her stand.

"It made a great night that much greater," he said.

Morgan was back in uniform for the first time on March 31, the day Molinelli of the shooting.

She after over the next few months—interspersed with grueling physical therapy—but perhaps the most important decoration came in December, when the Borough Council voted to .

Brock and her union, Police Benevolent Association 186, had since July.

The new detective went to work on Monday. A full caseload awaits.

Over the past few weeks, the Police Department has dealt with a , part of a in the county, a , and most recently, the

But Morgan's wish, first written on a note to her boss in the hospital a few months ago, has become reality.

She's coming back to work.


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