Funeral Set For McHenry County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Keltner, Killed In Shooting At Rockford Hotel
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Law enforcement officers from across the country will gather in McHenry County on Wednesday to say goodbye to one of their own.
Sheriffs' Deputy Jacob Keltner was killed last week when he was shot while helping a federal fugitive task force serve an arrest warrant at a hotel in Rockford.
Keltner's funeral was scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at Woodstock High School.
Keltner, 35, was a deputy at the McHenry County Sheriff's Office for 12 years. He leaves behind a wife and two sons.
At his wake on Tuesday in Huntley, hundreds of officers showed up to pay their respects.
In a moving letter released on Monday, his wife wrote "Nothing can make this better."
"Telling my children he was taken from us was the worst moment of my life. They are innocent and pure and certainly do not deserve this. They will never know their daddy like they deserve. They won't know him as a jokester. They won't know his contagious smile and his infectious laugh. He was taken from them far too soon," Becki Keltner wrote.
Members of the fallen officer's honor guard talked about their loss, and the huge show of support from the community.
"I think it's tremendous that the family knows that no matter where they are in the world or the country that somebody's always there for them," Lake In The Hills Police Sgt. Lloyd Howen said.
McHenry Police Officer Brian Aalto said it also shows, when tragedy does strike, people come together with a strong show of support of a fallen officer and their family.
"Despite some of the rhetoric in the last couple of years, it shows that people really do still care. People really care, and it affects them deeply when a law enforcement officer is killed in the line of duty," he said.
Following Keltner's funeral, a procession will take his casket from Woodstock High School, then back to the funeral home in Huntley.
Keltner was shot in the head on Thursday in the parking lot of the Extended Stay America hotel in Rockford.
Authorities said he was a member of a U.S. Marshals' fugitive task force serving an arrest warrant at the hotel. Other members of the task force were trying to get into Floyd Brown's third-floor hotel room, when Brown opened fire with a high-powered assault rifle and shot through the hotel door, wounding his girlfriend, who was in the room with him.
Brown then jumped out a window, and shot Keltner in the head in the parking lot, before fleeing the scene in his Mercury Grand Marquis, police and prosecutors have said.
Brown, 39, has been charged with murder in federal and state court. He could face the death penalty if convicted in federal court.
If you want to make a donation to Keltner's family, you can do so through the McHenry County Sheriff's Office.
