Bomb Squad Detective Sean Mulcahy was carrying on his dad’s legacy when he responded to the homemade bomb attack by two Islamist fanatics at Gracie Mansion.
Mulcahy, 51, was driving to work in Manhattan Saturday when he saw cops flying up the West Side Highway in a Bomb Squad truck and wondered what job they were on. He found out moments later.
“The sergeant who was on the scene called and said, ‘You guys can start gearing up and come up here because this is turning into something a little bit more,’” he told The Post in an exclusive interview at the West Village’s Sixth Precinct stationhouse.
When they arrived at East 88th Street and East End Avenue, one of the officers who was there was dressed in a bomb suit.
Mulcahy and his partner quickly readied the NYPD’s robot. After the bombs were removed, other squad members took them away for testing.
Mulcahy and his bomb-sniffing dog Tony then conducted “secondary searches,” he said.
He didn’t even tell his two sons, 19 and 16, that he had been there.
The detective learned that from his father, Denis Mulcahy, who retired from the same squad in 2022 after 33 years in the department.
“This is what you’re trained for,” said the 82-year-old, who was born in Ireland and joined the department in 1989
He worked on abortion-clinic bombing cases in the 1980s,including a particularly harrowing experience at a Queens docctor’s office.
“We lifted one of the seat cushions and there were three sticks of dynamite with a travel alarm clock,” he recalled. “So we made the decision of removing the power source . . . a visible nine-volt battery.”
It worked — the device never detonated and he received the Medal of Valor, one of the department’s highest honors.
His daughter, Maureen Mulcahy, an NYPD lieutenant who retired in 2019, didn’t sweat it that her brother Sean was at the chaotic Gracie scene.
“But I mean, I grew up with it with my father,” she said. “We didn’t know too much until we saw in the The Post.”
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