Midwest

Heartbroken widow of slain Michigan officer remembers him as 'truly exceptional': 'Our family lost everything'

Published

2 years ago

June 28, 2024

Heartbroken widow of slain Michigan officer remembers him as 'truly exceptional': 'Our family lost everything'

Jacqueline Reckling said her family has lost its “rock” after her husband was killed in the line of duty Saturday night, leaving behind three young children and one on the way.

“The world has been hearing about how the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office lost a talented and dedicated detective this weekend. But more significantly, our family lost everything,” the grieving widow told “Fox & Friends” Tuesday.

Thirty-year-old Bradley Reckling, a Michigan sheriff’s deputy, was killed in an ambush when the driver of a stolen vehicle jumped out and opened fire.

POLICE OFFICERS DRIVEN OUT BY PROGRESSIVE TREATMENT OFFER NEXT-GENERATION LAW ENFORCEMENT A BLUNT WARNING

Jacqueline, who is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, said her young daughters – ages six, four and one – do not yet fully understand what happened to their father.

“He was everything that was good and truly an exceptional human being. He poured his entire heart into every aspect of his life, and he was selfless in giving. He put himself before others, and he always showed up,” she said. “He loved being a detective, and he was a great detective for all those reasons. But he loved being a dad more, and he was the best dad to our girls. … He taught so much to our girls, and they looked up to him so much. They wanted to be just like him. And they deserve so much more time with him.”

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told “Fox & Friends First” that Bradley was in plain clothes and an unmarked car at the time of the incident. He reported that three people have since been arrested.

Bouchard noted Bradley’s diligence and work ethic, saying he was “honored” to promote him to sheriff’s deputy.

Deputy Brad Reckling tragically lost his life in the line of duty on June 23, 2024. He leaves behind a wife and three children. (Oakland County Sheriff’s Office)

“So many people are hurting after this and just crushed, quite frankly,” Bouchard said. “I think sometimes when you lose someone that’s this impactful and larger-than-life, it makes a bigger crater, if you will.”

“What we’re trying to do is do everything we can to help the family, support the family, take out some of the financial bumps and edges that they’re going to be facing. We’ll never fill that hole, no one will ever be able to do that, but we’re going to try to help them on things we can help and be there for them.”

WHO SUFFERS FROM DEFUNDING THE POLICE? THIS BLUE CITY HAS OVER 1,000 UNSOLVED MURDERS

Tunnel to Towers CEO Frank Siller has since promised to pay off the Recklings’ mortgage to help alleviate the financial burden Jacqueline now faces as a soon-to-be mother of four. The family also has a GoFundMe page for support.

Jacqueline’s message to Americans is to remember that police officers are just doing their jobs and going home to their families like everyone else.

“Brad was my best friend. We made such a great team together, and we were building such a beautiful life,” she said. “We lost the rock of our family in addition to the community losing a detective.”

Amy Nelson is a producer with Fox News Digital.

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Cleveland, OH

Francine Esther Nshimirimana Obituary April 24, 2026 – Slone and Co. Funeral Directors

Published

2 minutes ago

May 2, 2026

Press Room

Francine Esther Nshimirimana Obituary April 24, 2026 – Slone and Co. Funeral Directors

Francine Esther Nshimirimana, age 47, passed away on April 24, 2026.

Family and friends are welcome on Saturday, May 2, 2026, from 11 a.m. until time of Service at 12 p.m., at Slone & Co. Life Celebration Center 3556 W. 130th St. Cleveland, OH 44111. Interment West Park Cemetery.

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Illinois

Where Route 66 begins: A tale of boom, bust, baseball, and a ‘big house’

Published

1 hour ago

May 2, 2026

Press Room

Where Route 66 begins: A tale of boom, bust, baseball, and a ‘big house’

Editor’s note: This story is part of the Monitor’s summerlong series following old U.S. Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica, California.

Just a few blocks from the Old Joliet Prison, Johnny Williams is standing outside a tire shop, waiting for a repair.

He’s a lifelong resident of the Joliet area, a father of six and grandfather of 10, and he remembers back in the day when the prison was part of the economic engine that made Joliet run.

Why We Wrote This

Route 66 courses through American cities that once flourished before their economies faded or were forced to change. The story of Joliet, Illinois, reflects the high times, the hardships and the reinvention found along the century-old road.

“I remember when people used to sit out there visiting their people — on the buses, you know?” Mr. Williams says. “I have plenty of people whose parents and uncles worked there.” He gestures toward the 25-foot limestone walls, still topped with razor wire. “And as a child, I would always wonder — what’s behind that wall?”

So, he still marvels at how the once imposing former state penitentiary has been transformed over the past decade. Today, the people walking through its front gate are not prisoners or staff, but tourists and Americana-lovers there to have fun and celebrate the centennial of Route 66. The iconic roadway, noted in hundreds of anthems about America, passed right by the prison until 1940, when it was rerouted a few blocks away.

The prison once housed such infamous criminals as Richard Speck, James Earl Ray, and John Wayne Gacy. But since its closing in 2002, it has become a site for concerts, film viewings, and today, an event dubbed “The Big House Ballgame.”

People wondered about the prison for decades, said Quinn Adamowski, board president of the Joliet Area Historical Museum, which now runs the prison, before the game. “This site defined Joliet in many ways.”

After the prison closed, it was largely abandoned, becoming a liability, Mr. Adamowski said, especially in this neighborhood. “In 2017, 160 years after the first inmates arrived, we had the opportunity to wonder what this site could be,” he added. “It was our time – Joliet’s time – to define the prison.”

The Big House Ballgame on April 30, which is the 100th anniversary of the naming of Route 66, featured the Joliet Slammers, a Frontier League baseball team co-owned by actor Bill Murray. It was one of the featured events of an official five-city kickoff of events commemorating America’s “Mother Road.”

Baseball was also part of the prison’s history. In the early 20th century, inmates formed teams and played games against one another and against outside clubs, part of a broader effort to impose order and routine within the prison. The Big House Ballgame today is, in part, an attempt to revive that history — to connect the present moment to something that had once taken place on the same ground.

What happened to Joliet over the past century and a half happened, in some version, to nearly every city and town along Route 66. The collapse of jobs, travel routes, and movement west – and then a slow, uncertain reinvention.

The roadway passed through working America, and then through America after the work was gone. The centennial is, among other things, a celebration of the survival of places that kept going when the economies that made them no longer existed.

***

Curt Herron, like Mr. Williams, has lived in this part of Will County his whole life, growing up in Lockport, a small city just north of Joliet, before spending 45 years as a sports reporter covering high schools, the Slammers, and nearly every sporting event in between. Today, he’s an assistant at the historical museum.

Harry Bruinius/The Christian Science Monitor

Curt Herron, an assistant with the Joliet Area Historical Museum, stands near the front gate of the Old Joliet Prison, April 30, 2026. He is a lifelong resident of the area and spent 45 years as a local sports writer.

“Joliet was always a real working-class city,” he says, pausing in the shadow of a guard tower as a group of tourists photographs the cellblock windows above him. “The second biggest steel city in the country after Pittsburgh. And then, on top of that, a prison city — two prisons within a few miles of each other, running simultaneously for 75 years. Almost nowhere in America can say that,” he says, noting that the area’s other prison, Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, is still in operation.

The steel came first. In 1869, the Joliet Iron and Steel Works opened along the Des Plaines River, drawing on the region’s coal deposits and its limestone – the same blue-gray stone that built the prison walls, the same stone quarried from just beneath the city’s surface – to become one of the great industrial enterprises of the Gilded Age. At its height, it employed thousands of men and produced the railroad rails that stitched together the American West.

Joliet drew immigrant workers in successive waves: first, the Irish who dug the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the 1840s; then Poles, Lithuanians, and Eastern Europeans; then African Americans and Mexican migrants during the First World War. Joliet became, in the language of the era, a city of stone and steel – proud of its grit and defined by its labor, built on the conviction that hard work in a hard place was its own kind of American story.

Then, the steel left. By the early 1980s, the mill was gone, and the unemployment rate in Joliet climbed to 26% – among the highest of any city in the United States at the time. The limestone ruins of the ironworks sat empty along the river for decades, overgrown with vegetation, before the Forest Preserve District turned them into a heritage trail.

A wound, converted in time into a park.

“We were known for being a hardscrabble place,” Mr. Herron says. “Because of the prisons and the steel industry and a lot of working-class people. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s also led to a real competitive area – a lot of great athletes have come from here, a lot of people who’ve gone on to do remarkable things.” These include actors Nick Offerman and Melissa McCarthy, two Super Bowl-winning football players, and a WNBA champion.

But transportation has been, and remains, a major driver of Joliet’s economic engine. The Illinois and Michigan Canal and the railroads that followed in the 19th and 20th centuries once spurred its growth. Today, vast inland port complexes make Joliet one of the major freight hubs in North America.

And then, Route 66, which ran directly through downtown, across the Des Plaines River at the Ruby Street Bridge, helped make Joliet a destination for travelers.

The state is betting that Route 66 travel will continue to help the local economy, said Catie Sheehan, the Illinois deputy director of tourism and a Route 66 Centennial commissioner. “Joliet is one of nearly 100 communities along the Illinois stretch of the Mother Road. These towns bring Route 66 to life in so many different ways.”

Her tourism office has funded a suite of new roadside attractions for the centennial: a 20-foot “Tire Tower” for Joliet’s Chicagoland Speedway, a 12-foot penny for Lincoln, Illinois, and a 14-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln for Granite City.

“A lot of Midwestern industrial towns have fallen by the wayside and haven’t recovered,” Mr. Herron says. “Transportation saved the day – it’s always been about roads and waterways here.”

***

Dan Goedert is sitting in the stands at The Big House Ballgame, dressed as a prisoner with a black and white striped shirt.

Harry Bruinius/The Christian Science Monitor

Dan Goedert, a retired emergency room nurse, sits in the stands wearing a makeshift prisoner’s shirt before the start of The Big House Ballgame at the Old Joliet Prison, April 30, 2026.

A retired emergency room nurse, Mr. Goedert has posed for a few pictures already. “I just read about this yesterday,” he says. “So, I just came to have a little fun today.”

The group Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues have been playing in the old prison yard, along with local blues singer Sheryl Youngblood. They do a spirited version of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.”

But the old prison, like Route 66, has a legendary pop cultural connection. “We like history, and we’re old, so we remember the ‘Blues Brothers,’” says Sue Bradley, a special education teacher sitting on the grass before the game with her husband John, who works in finance. She gestures toward people wearing fedoras and black suits and ties. “You’ll see people dressed like them everywhere here today. This is the prison they got out of at the beginning of the movie.”

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Indiana

Rapid Reaction: Indiana stomps Northwestern 9-2 at Wrigley Field

Published

2 hours ago

May 2, 2026

Press Room

Rapid Reaction: Indiana stomps Northwestern 9-2 at Wrigley Field

Northwestern baseball’s cherished tradition of playing at Wrigley Field filled the dugout and the stands with joy and humility. But it did not deliver a win this year, as Indiana (21-25, 7-15 B1G) used two offensive spurts and stifling pitching to outlast the Wildcats (17-25-1, 5-17 B1G) 9-2 on Friday night.

The fourth annual ‘Cats Classic unfolded under a fading sunset on a brisk 43-degree evening. The chilly weather did not deter fans from making the trip to Wrigleyville. A flurry of spectators dressed in purple sweaters and beanies lined the third-base side, while the Hoosiers countered with supporters of their own bearing red attire along the first-base line.

Ryan Weaver got the start for Northwestern, pitching five innings where he ceded six hits and five runs while striking out six. Sam Hliboki pitched two scoreless innings in relief.

Meanwhile, Indiana’s starter Tony Neubeck pitched a six-inning shutout, walking four ‘Cats while striking out seven.

The Hoosiers’ offense jumped on Weaver early. Indiana’s Hogan Denny knocked a leadoff double in the top of the first before Jake Hanley singled to right field, where Jackson Freeman played the ball cleanly to hold Denny at third.

With runners at the corners and nobody out, a sacrifice fly from Owen ten Oever brought Denny home for the game’s first run. Weaver buckled down afterwards, securing a strikeout and flyout to hold Indiana’s lead at 1-0.

NU’s lone baserunner in the bottom of the first was Ryan Kucherak, who reached on a throwing error by shortstop Cooper Malamazian. Aside from that, the ‘Cats went quietly.

In the top half of the second frame, the leadoff runner again reached base off Weaver and advanced to third on two sacrifice groundouts. Weaver recorded a clutch strikeout to strand Landen Fry at third.

With two outs and nobody on in the second inning, Freeman recorded NU’s first hit of the game and de Groot drew a walk to put Freeman in scoring position. The inning ended with a whimper as Shane Hofstadler grounded out to third.

The third inning was marked by several self-inclifted errors for the Wildcats and Indiana made them pay for each one. Weaver induced a swinging strike three, but a passed ball put Hogan on first, making it three straight innings in which Indiana’s leadoff runner reached base. Two wild pitches then moved Hogan all the way to third.

The Hoosiers immediately took advantage, as Jake Hanley singled to right field to score Hogan and ten Oever followed by mashing a double into the left-center gap and off the green ivy to bring home Hanley and make it 3-0 Indiana.

Indiana’s offense didn’t stop there. Weaver hit a batter to put a second runner on and Landen Fry plated them both on a single to center field. The Northwestern left-hander got two-straight groundouts to strand Fry on base, but the damage was done. The ‘Cats found themselves in an early 5-0 hole after a four-run inning from IU.

Meanwhile, Neubeck continued to shut down Northwestern’s offense, pitching a scoreless inning around a leadoff walk to Owen McElfatrick.

Weaver and the defense turned in their cleanest inning in the fourth. The graduate student opened with a strikeout and though Denny reached on a single, Hofstadler caught him trying to steal second on a ball in the dirt. Weaver then recorded his second strikeout of the inning to keep the score at 5-0.

In the bottom half, NU stretched its reached base streak to four consecutive innings as Jake Yang poked a single to left field. With two outs, de Groot moved Yang into scoring position with a single, but Hofstadler lifted a high foul popout that was caught near the Wildcats’ dugout, leaving them empty handed through four frames.

Weaver tossed a scoreless frame in his final inning of work, capped off by a nice defensive play for the ‘Cats where McElfatrick laid out to snag a sharply hit ball and tossed a one-hopper to first for Nick Barron to scoop out of the dirt for the final out.

NU loaded two runners on base in the bottom of the fifth via a McElfatrick single and a Kucherak walk, but again, the ‘Cats were unable to capitalize, leaving its seventh and eighth runners on base.

Sam Hliboki took the mound for NU in the top of the sixth, plunking the first batter he saw. He appeared to hit the second as well, but after review, the umpires ruled that Moore interfered by bending his knee into the pitch, leading to IU head coach Jeff Mercer’s ejection. Hliboki induced a groundout and flyout to end the inning.

The Wildcats’ batters continued to be silenced in the bottom half of the sixth by Neubeck, eclipsing 100 pitches on a strikeout of Hofstadler. The theme of untimely hitting persisted for NU, as it stranded a runner in scoring position for the fourth time.

The Hoosiers threatened to grow their lead in the seventh, loading the bases with one out. Hliboki held firm, striking out both Fry and Cal Gates to keep the ‘Cats in it.

NU’s offense finally got on the board in the seventh inning, teeing off Neubeck’s replacement in Jacob Vogel. McElfatrick continued his strong night with a second base hit and Kucherak’s double moved him to third. For the first time on Friday night, the Wildcats had a runner on third.

Noah Ruiz plated both McElfatrick and Kucherak on a two-run RBI single to make it a 5-2 game.

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