Fallen Chicago police officer Krystal Rivera, a four-year-veteran of the department will be laid to rest Wednesday at a funeral service in suburban Forest Park.
The funeral follows a visitation service for Rivera held Tuesday, where dozens of officers lined the streets outside Chicago’s Montclair-Lucania Funeral Home to pay their respects.
The service is set to begin at 12 p.m. It will play in the video player above and on the NBC Chicago streaming channel once it begins.
As part of the funeral service, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered flags to fly at half-staff through sunset Wednesday.
Thirty-six-year-old Rivera was shot and killed in the line of duty on June 5 in the city’s East Chatham neighborhood after an “investigatory stop” of an armed person led to a police chase. According to a Chicago Sun-Times report, Rivera was unintentionally shot by her partner after the confrontation led police into an apartment building, where at least one suspect pointed a rifle at police.
Two men, both felons with criminal records have been charged in connection with Rivera’s death, the report said.
Rivera was the mother of a “very young daughter,” Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said during a press conference.
“No matter how old your children are, they’re still always your children, and for a mother to lose her daughter like that knowing that she was trying to do the right thing every single day, that she was protecting lives, that she was a hero, and she lost her life tragically doing the job that she loved,” Snelling said. “That was one of the things that her mother said, she loved her job, and the way that she worked.”
Read more about the incident here.
