Watch: Boy runs a mile to raise funds for McHenry County sheriff's deputy's family
A visitation and funeral will be held this week for fallen McHenry County sheriff's Deputy Jacob Keltner as colleagues, neighbors and the public at large continue to mourn him.
McHenry County sheriff's office officials said Saturday Keltner's visitation will be from 2 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at DeFiore Funeral & Cremation Service, 10763 Dundee Road in Huntley. A formal law enforcement walk-through is scheduled for 6 p.m.
The funeral will start at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Woodstock North High School, 3000 Raffel Road in Woodstock.
The sheriff's office continued to thank the public Saturday.
“We are truly honored by the almost overwhelming outpouring of support we are receiving from around the world,” the office wrote on its Facebook page.
The message accompanied a video of a boy identified only as Zechariah running one mile around his neighborhood Friday night in honor of Keltner. Zechariah's Facebook page, Running for Heroes, says he runs to raise funds for the Stephen Siller Tunnels to Towers Foundation, which pays off mortgages for the families of military personnel and first responders killed in the line of duty.
That started with Stephen Siller, a New York City firefighter killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and it now includes Keltner, whose picture appears prominently on its website, tunnel2towers.org, with a donation link.
The sheriff's office tweeted Saturday night that it is otherwise “coordinating with the family and organizations accepting donations and ask(s) for patience during this time.”
Keltner, 35, of the Crystal Lake area, was killed Thursday while trying to serve an arrest warrant at a hotel in Rockford as part of a U.S. Marshals team. Authorities say Floyd E. Brown of Springfield shot Keltner as he fled through a window of the third-story hotel room and was later apprehended after a six-hour standoff downstate along Interstate 55.
Keltner, who had a wife and two children, was a 13-year police veteran who comes from a law enforcement family. His brother works for the DuPage County sheriff's office, from which his father retired.
McHenry County sheriff's police said the funeral procession route for Keltner has yet to be finalized.
Lake County sheriff's police Detective Eric Kaechele, who works on a gang task force, remembered Keltner as a “stand-up guy and awesome cop.”
Kaechele said Saturday he got to know Keltner over the past five or six years, working with him on a warrants unit and collaborating on narcotics cases that involved McHenry and Lake counties.
“I could tell that he was smart,” Kaechele said. “He knew what he was doing. Like I said, he was a leader. And I think, profession aside, all of us for sure at the Lake County sheriff's office are here to support people that were closer to him and worked with him on a more frequent basis. And of course, the family also.”
Keltner, who graduated from Willowbrook High School in Villa Park in 2001, served in the Army before going into law enforcement. His loss was a shock to neighbors.
“I can't even imagine how that's going to be,” Lisa Positeri, a backyard neighbor of the Keltners, told ABC 7 Chicago on Friday. “Not having their dad there is going to be very hard. Because he's a good dad. I can hardly believe he was shot. I'm stunned.”
Keltner's parents live in the same Crystal Lake community, just around the corner, neighbors told ABC 7. McHenry sheriff's patrol cars were outside both homes Friday afternoon.
“My heart really goes out to the mom and the dad, because to lose a child, I don't care how old they are, it's still your child,” said Joyce Heckler, backyard neighbor.
Neighbors told ABC 7 they often saw Keltner's family walking to his parents' house and vice-versa.
“They both move into the same neighborhood and they can walk through yards to get to each other's house,” Positeri said. “That's really sensational to me. It says a lot of the way the families are now.”
Flags at the McHenry County sheriff's office fly at half-staff, and badges are covered in black bands, ABC 7 reported.
“I'm sad for everyone,” Positeri said, “for everyone in the neighborhood, because everybody has lost something, and his family has lost the most for sure.”