Hundreds mourn slain Chatham police officer

Known as a reserved and upstanding first lieutenant in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, Thomas Wortham IV wasn't afraid to personally connect with the young soldiers under his command.

Army National Guard Spc. David Capps said his fear of ranking Army officers quickly melted under Wortham's warm, joking personality and willingness to spend time with soldiers.

"He'd sit down and hang out with the enlisted (men)," Capps said with tears streaming down his face outside of the Leak & Sons Funeral Home on Chicago's South Side. "Most officers don't hang out with enlisted. He hung out and talked with us and showed us the ways to be a good soldier. That's just the way he was."

Chicago police officers welcome Sandra Wortham (left), sister of Chicago Police Officer Thomas Wortham, outside his wake Thursday. (Tribune / Abel Uribe) MORE PHOTOS

Capps was one of several hundred mourners who turned out Thursday for visitation for Wortham, who was also a three-year Chicago police officer.

The visitation came exactly one week to the day he was shot and killed when police say four men tried robbing him at gunpoint of his new motorcycle outside of his parents' Chatham home.

The patrolman assigned to the Englewood District had recently returned from a second tour of duty in Iraq.

Surrounded by flowers sent from police departments as far as New York City, Wortham wore his dress police uniform, his cap sitting on top of the coffin. Inscribed in gold letters on his coffin's inner lid were words that close friends and family members said the young patrolman lived by: "May the work that I've done speak for itself."

Former Chicago Police Supt. Terry Hillard, who worked with Wortham's father and lives near the family, said he was impressed with how the Morgan Park Academy graduate chose public service over a career in a more lucrative field.

"He lost his life over a motorcycle," Hillard said. "Where are our values? Where are our morals? They don't come around too often, people like this."