CHICAGO — Mourners, elected officials and police officers from across the state gathered in the near west suburbs Wednesday for the funeral of slain Chicago police Officer Krystal Rivera, who was remembered as a woman of faith fiercely loyal to her family and a caring friend.

The ceremony for Rivera 36, mistakenly shot and killed by her partner, was the first held this year for a CPD officer killed in the line of duty.

Among the first to eulogize Rivera was CPD Superintendent Larry Snelling, who was present at the hospital and spoke with the officer’s family the night she died. Snelling remembered how Rivera’s 10-year-old daughter, Isabella, asked him that night, “Was my mom a good police officer?”

“She was, she is and she always will be a hero to everyone here,” Snelling said to mourners. “Her name will not be forgotten. She gave everything to help other people. What a noble thing from a noble person.”

Snelling added that, in August 2024, Rivera received a Lifesaving Award for aid she gave a citizen who was “catastrophically injured.”

“In taking on a job like this … you understand the risks of the job, and yet you choose to do it anyway,” Snelling said. “You know that every day that you go out into the street, with all of the unpredictability of policing, there’s a strong possibility that you may never return home. And yet she did it anyway. She made a difference in this city.”

Rivera was born and raised in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and, at an early age, saw a future in law enforcement, Police Department Chaplain Kimberly Lewis-Davis told attendees.

“She had a contagious sense of humor and created a light that radiated in every room she entered,” Lewis-Davis said. “Krystal’s number one priority was always her daughter, Isabella. Her daughter was the center of her world, and everything she did was with Isabella in mind.”

Family members spoke in remembrance as well.

“Some lights shine so brightly, they leave a glow long after they’re gone. Krystal was one of those lights,” Rivera’s aunt, Maria Mercado, said. “From early on it was clear: Serving and protecting were inherently part of her DNA.”

Mercado told of Rivera’s Christian faith — “Her love for God was beautiful and grounding,” she said — and how she looked for any opportunity to raise someone else’s spirits.

“She’d fix your hair without saying a word, just so you felt good walking into the world,” Mercado said. “That’s who she was: someone who wanted everyone around her to win.”

“And her laugh? Unforgettable.”

By 11:30 a.m., hundreds of Chicago patrol officers lined the driveway of the Forest Park shopping center where Living Word Christian Center is located. They walked single file around a large parking lot as piano music emerged from inside the church. An American flag fluttered from a crane parked at the mouth of the driveway.

Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson were in attendance along with department leaders.

Rivera, a police officer for four years, was assigned to a tactical team in the Gresham District (6th) when she was mistakenly killed by her partner while chasing a suspect.

On June 5, Rivera and her team attempted to detain a weapons suspect in the 8200 block of South Drexel Avenue. That person ran into a nearby apartment, and Rivera and her team gave chase, police previously said. The officers were met inside by two other people, one of whom allegedly pointed a gun at Rivera.

Rivera’s partner, apparently standing behind her, fired a single shot, striking her in the back. With no time to wait for an ambulance, other officers placed Rivera in a squad car to take her to University of Chicago Medical Center. She was pronounced dead soon after arriving at the hospital.

The Cook County medical examiner’s office said she was shot once. Her death was ruled a homicide, though her autopsy report hasn’t been finalized.

In the chaos following the gunfire, the three people in the apartment were able to, briefly, evade police. Two were soon taken into custody, and one man, Adrian Rucker, was charged two days later. Rucker, 25, had six warrants at the time of his arrest, according to prosecutors.

He was charged with armed violence, use of a firearm without a firearm owner’s identification card, possession of a fake ID and drug possession, and was ordered held pending trial.

Last weekend, authorities announced charges against the man who, police say, was the subject of the initial street stop that sparked the shooting. Jaylin Arnold, 27, was charged with armed violence, being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a controlled substance. Like Rucker, he was ordered held pending trial.

Less than a year ago, another officer in the Gresham District, Enrique Martinez, was fatally shot while on-duty less than a half-mile from where Rivera was shot.

Others who spoke at the funeral included Rivera’s best friend Jen Topacio, who took her place at the lectern and started to sing the first few bars of “Texas Hold’em” by Beyoncé.

“Just kidding,” she said, before launching into a eulogy about how she could hear Rivera’s “ridiculous snort laugh a mile away.”

Topacio described years’ worth of hijinks with Rivera, the godmother to her own daughter: Rivera’s sharp sense of style, hanging out and making plans, eating sticky rice and ketchup, telling off old boyfriends and listening to music.

She was wearing a cowboy hat and fringed jacket, and declared as she began, “Kris, look what you’ve got me wearing up here!”

As Rivera’s casket was taken from the church, it was met by hundreds of police officers in full formal uniforms. They stood motionless through a rifle salute and the playing of taps.

The bagpipes began to play a few moments later and the crowd of officers saluted as the casket, draped in a Chicago flag, stood ready to be loaded into a waiting hearse.

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