Hundreds paid respects at a vigil for Andres Mauricio Vasquez Lasso, the Chicago police officer who died on Wednesday.

A line of mourners, including dozens of police officers and other first responders in dress uniforms, stretched along the building’s sidewalk for most of the service from Oak Lawn’s Blake-Lamb Funeral Home. Two officers on horseback stood sentry at the door of the funeral home. An American flag fluttered above the procession, hanging from the extended ladder of a Chicago Fire Department truck.

Inside the funeral home, “you could hear a pin drop,” former Ald. Bob Fioretti said. “I have never seen such silence and tearful emotion from so many people.”

Visitors included Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. JB Pritzker. Eld. Matt O’Shea, the 19th, said he had come to “show my respect to the hero”.

Vasquez Lasso’s funeral will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Rita of Cassia Shrine Chapel in the Ashburn neighborhood before a private burial. O’Shea called on residents of his southwest Chicago ward to line the streets during Vasquez Lasso’s funeral procession.

[ Wife of slain officer Andrés Mauricio Vásquez Lasso’s posts tribute to him ahead of funeral this week ]

“Officer Lasso was exactly what we want in the Chicago Police Department. He was very young, had a life ahead of him and a beautiful wife,” O’Shea said.

Outside the funeral home, John Catanzara Jr., president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, passed black and blue police mourning bands. Catanzara said Vasquez Lasso, 32, was shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence incident.

“It really highlights what Chicago police officers and officers do every day in this country,” he said.

The grieving family, including the officer’s wife, is “catatonic,” Catanzara said.

“It’s a gut punch that nobody is prepared for, especially at that young age,” he said.

For a group of “Gold Star” family members who have lost loved ones killed in the line of duty, it was a solemn duty to show up to support the family of Vasquez Lasso. trip dallas police took Officer Cullen Gordon Back when her father, the Chicago police Officer Michael Gordonwas killed in a car accident by a drunk driver in 2004, he said.

“I don’t remember much about my dad,” said Gordon, who came from Texas to honor Vasquez Lasso and broke down in tears as he spoke. “But I remember that day.”

“I remember getting the death notice,” said Gordon, who was 5 when his father died. “I remember waking up. I remember the funeral. I remember everything later. And I remember the men and women of the Chicago Police Department making sure my dad was never forgotten.”

[email protected]