Moments before a McHenry County sheriff’s deputy was shot to death outside a Rockford motel, police said, blasts of gunfire barely missed three other officers trying to arrest the gunman inside the motel.
Officers testified Tuesday about their narrow escape at the trial of Floyd E. Brown, charged with murder in the death of Deputy Jacob Keltner in 2019. A guest at the motel also described how he saw a man limping to his car and driving off just after the shooting, before the witness discovered Keltner lying shot in the parking lot.
Brown, 42, of Springfield, is charged with first-degree murder, several counts of attempted murder, assault of a federal officer and weapons offenses. He has denied involvement in the shooting. If convicted in federal court in Rockford, he faces mandatory life in prison.
The shooting occurred March 7, 2019, as the deputies, as part of a U.S. Marshals task force, were attempting to arrest Brown on a warrant at the Extended Stay motel in Rockford.
McHenry County Sheriff’s Sgt. Daniel Kramer took the stand to say that a hotel clerk had told him Brown’s girlfriend had just paid the bill for his stay in Room 305 minutes before. At Kramer’s request, a maintenance man went into the hotel room on the pretense of looking for a water leak, and came out to confirm that Brown and his girlfriend were inside.
Kramer and two other deputies prepared to enter the room from the hallway, while Keltner parked his unmarked white SUV at a back corner of the building. “I will keep an eye on the (hotel room) window and this (back) door,” Keltner texted the other deputies.
McHenry County Deputy Michael Flannery said he banged on the door and announced that the officers had a warrant to arrest Brown, and Flannery was about to use a battering ram to break the door open. From inside, Flannery said, Brown yelled, “Don’t do it!” Suddenly, a flurry of gunshots rang out and blasted through the door and walls next to the officers — at least one shot missing Flannery’s head by inches.
One of the bullets hit Brown’s girlfriend in the arm after she had answered the door. Because she was near the doorway, Kramer said, officers could not return fire for fear of endangering her. The deputies retreated, Flannery to a stairwell, the other two to the elevator.
They then heard another set of shots, sounding farther away and more muffled. Brown shattered the third-floor hotel room window and jumped out, prosecutors said, before shooting Keltner and escaping.
Text messages just before the shooting suggested that Keltner, who was married with two young sons, may not initially have been aware that the raid had begun. Keltner, in preparation for his role, had texted Kramer, “Dan, let me know when you are knocking so I can get out on feet’s,” — but Kramer didn’t see the message until after the shooting.
Immediately after the initial shooting, one of the deputies radioed Keltner to call 911, which Keltner was doing when he got shot in the upper back. He fell to the ground beside his vehicle in the rear parking lot, with his pistol holstered and his rifle lying on the ground next to him, with the stock still unfolded.
A guest at the hotel, Oracio Gonzalez, testified that he was in his car in the rear parking lot, checking his emails, when he heard two popping sounds. He looked up to see a man limping across the lot to his car, hunched over and holding one arm to his waist. Gonzalez did not identify the man as Brown, but said the man left in a gray sedan.
Prosecutors said the car was the same one in which Brown was later arrested, after a car chase in which police later ran him off of Interstate 55 near Downstate Bloomington, about 140 miles from Rockford. After police set off tear gas following a six-hour standoff, Brown surrendered. Two loaded rifles with obliterated serial numbers and hundreds of rounds of ammunition were found in his car, according to the search warrant affidavit.
Brown told paramedics he’d fallen from a third-floor window but got away feeling no pain due to adrenaline, prosecutors alleged. In the motel room, police said they found two loaded 9 mm handguns, shell casings and blood.
At the time of his arrest, Brown was on parole for a series of burglaries in McLean and Macon counties in 2011. Sentenced to 13 years in prison, records show he had been released in January 2018 with credit for good behavior.
One of his arrest warrants from Downstate alleged that he’d fled police investigating a burglary and crashed his car, injuring at least two people.
A search of a laptop Brown and his girlfriend bought showed searches online for “cop get ambushed” and “killing cops,” prosecutors wrote in court documents. In a series of videos Brown made on his cellphone a month before the shooting, prosecutors alleged, he said he hated police.
“If you don’t know me by now, you will before long,” he said. “These (expletive) police want to make me famous, but I’m gonna make they ass famous.”
The trial, which began Monday, is expected to last three to four weeks.
