Police Procession Escorts Body Of Slain Merrillville Officer To Morgue
Updated 09/09/14 - 11:11 a.m.
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Relatives, friends, and colleagues of a fallen police officer gathered in Oak Lawn on Tuesday to pay tribute to the first Merrillville, Indiana, police officer killed in the line of duty.
CBS 2's Susanna Song reports Police Officer Nicholas Schultz had just turned 24 earlier this month and had been on the force for little more than a year. He was shot in the head Friday night while responding to a call that an evicted tenant had moved back into a condo.
The 31-year-old suspect was wearing body armor when he shot Schultz, then killed himself.
Schultz was hospitalized in critical condition, but was taken off life support at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn on Sunday.
"Nick is just an amazing young man. His passion was to become a police officer, to protect people, and he was taken too soon in doing his life's passion," Joe Hamer, chairman of the Indiana Fraternal Order of Police. "The Merrillville Police Department is taken back. They're hurting. They've lost a fellow officer, family member as well. The law enforcement community, as a whole, is grieving for the loss."
Schultz was an organ donor, and doctors had been harvesting his organs for the past couple days, so it wasn't until Tuesday morning that his colleagues were able to give him a formal profession from the hospital to the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
A few dozen officers from northwest Indiana and the Chicago area honored Schultz with a formation and salute before the procession. They surrounded his family and escorted them the whole way from the hospital to the morgue, his body wrapped in an American flag.
At about 9:40 a.m. a long line of police cars and SUVs, their lights flashing, led the procession up Southwest Highway, then north along Western Avenue to Harrison Street.
Officers from all over the region – including New Chicago, Hammond, Dyer, Munster, and Gary in Indiana; and Chicago and Oak Lawn in Illinois – came to pay their respects, including at least one officer who never met Schultz.
"I can relate. He's young. He just started his family. It's something that these guys got to think when they put that badge on. He's 24 years old, I'm 33. I wake up every day and wonder is it my last day I'm going to be coming. You know? You don't know what's going to happen to you," New Chicago Officer Michael Haskins said.
"No matter what color uniform we wear, no matter color our what skin is, our nationalities' we're all brothers and sisters in blue," Hamer said. "This is our little brother," Hamer said.
Funeral arrangements for Schultz -- a resident of Lowell, Ind. -- have not yet been set.
