Friends expressed relief upon learning of an arrest in the shooting death of a rural Kankakee County bar owner who authorities said was killed “execution-style” during a robbery inside her own establishment.
“It feels like a really big relief, if I’m being honest, that someone is in custody… he took a beautiful soul,” said friend Hailey Gershon.
Gershon paid her respects and remembered her friend, Courtney Drysdale, a 30-year-old mother who was shot and killed on Monday morning as she prepared to open The Line bar in rural Momence.
“It’s a weight lifted off the shoulders that someone is getting, how should I say this, what they deserve,” the friend said.
Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey said Drysdale complied with the suspect’s demands, and despite her cooperation, he shot her twice “execution-style.”
The suspect, identified as 47-year-old Julius Burkes, Jr., was arrested as he left his home in Hammond, Indiana, sheriff’s officials said. Authorities haven’t revealed why he allegedly chose to rob a bar nearly 40 miles from his home.
Burkes will be extradited to Illinois.
A flood of tips gave sheriff’s investigators a big break in the case, but they also credit high-definition cameras all over the business.
Officials said Burkes tried to remove one of the cameras after the shooting, before taking off.
“We’re fortunate that this camera, those cameras, were as good as they were,” Downey said.
In the day after the shooting, a single candle flickered in the cold night outside the bar – a quiet reminder of a loss friends say can never be replaced.
“It seems really heartless of somebody, like they have no soul themselves, to think what am I doing. They didn’t get very much out of it except took a whole life out of it,” Gershon said.
Courtney’s closest friends said they don’t want her to be remembered as a victim but as a devoted mother, a business owner and a pillar in the small community.
“She was a very compassionate person. She was the sweetest ever,” Gershon said. “She made connections with everybody that came in and built a whole new family here basically that her smile lit up a room, and she just made everybody happy.”
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