Cook County deputy dies of complications of COVID-19

CHICAGO (AP) — A longtime member of the Cook County Sheriff’s Office has died of complications of the coronavirus, officials announced Monday.

Deputy Richard O’Brien, a 25-year veteran of the department who was most recently assigned to the Civil Process Division in Skokie, is the second member of the department to die after testing positive for the virus. The other was a correctional officer, Sheila Rivera, who worked in the jail, where hundreds of detainees and jail staffers have tested positive and where six detainees have died.

O’Brien’s death Sunday was one of 46 Illinois deaths from COVID-19 reported Monday, the lowest daily total in two weeks. A total of 2,662 people in Illinois have died of complications of the illness caused by coronavirus, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said. With 2,341 new cases, COVID-19 has infected 63,840, although many have recovered.

O’Brien chose to keep working after he was diagnosed in January with leukemia — a decision that his wife said she tried to talk him out of.

“I actually asked him not to go to work but he just couldn’t not,” Cindi O’Brien told WLS-TV in Chicago last week after doctors put her husband on an ventilator. “He’s like, ‘I can’t let leukemia win.‘”

In a statement released after O’Brien’s death, the sheriff’s office said the 53-year-old deputy “earned the respect of his peers and supervisors for always asking to be assigned to the frontline and for going the extra mile.”

According to the sheriff’s department, O’Brien is survived by his wife and three children.

At his daily COVID-19 briefing, Pritzker said his observation from a warm spring weekend in Chicago was that as many as four people out of five were wearing face coverings. Face coverings are now required when going out in public and coming within 6 feet of another person. It’s part of loosened restrictions on Pritzker’s stay-at-home order that took effect last Friday.

“You should wear the mask when you’re meeting up with people on the street, and even walking by them on the sidewalk,” Pritzker said.