Samantha Harer's Death Still Unsolved 5 Months Later

CREST HILL, IL — This marks Officer Felipe "Phil" Flores' twenty-third consecutive week of being paid to stay off his job for the Crest Hill Police Department. More than five months have passed since Flores called the authorities in Channahon shortly after 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 13. He relayed that his 23-year-old girlfriend, Samantha Harer, had shot herself in the head inside her Channahon apartment while he was there. Harer was employed as a full-time Will County public safety dispatcher with WESCOM.

She had an appointment to have additional tattoo work done on her arms on the day of her death. She also left behind no suicide note. It's now the middle of summer and the cause and manner of her death has yet to be determined by Coroner Patrick K. O'Neil and the Will County Coroner's Office.

By the end of this week, Flores, who makes an annual salary of $80,000, will have collected at least $35,375 in regular pay since Feb. 13, the date when Crest Hill Chief of Police Ed Clark informed Flores that he was being put on paid suspension surrounding the death of his girlfriend.

On Monday, Patch spoke with Crest Hill Deputy Chief of Police Bradley Hertzmann because Clark is on vacation this week. Hertzmann said that Officer Flores' job status remains the same: he's still on paid leave and Hertzmann said he was not sure when that will change.

So far, Flores' five-month-long work absence has not been detrimental to the Crest Hill Police Department's staffing levels, because, from time to time, officers are away from the job for weeks at a time when recovering from a work-related injury or an illness, the deputy chief explained.

However, Hertzmann acknowledged that it is not common for Crest Hill to have one of their patrol officers under investigation by another area police department for this length of time. "We're in a holding (pattern). We've never had a situation like this before. We're just waiting for answers," he told Joliet Patch.

He said it was his understanding that Chief Clark has been in contact with the Will County-Grundy County Major Crimes Task Force regarding any updates or developments regarding the still-unsolved death probe for Harer.

Hertzmann said Monday he had no idea whether the authorities about 20 miles away in Channahon were leaning toward ruling Harer's death a suicide or a homicide.

CASE HITS LULL

Late last week, Patch interviewed Channahon Police Chief Shane Casey. He has been in the department since the 1990s and got promoted to chief last December following Jeff Wold's retirement. For years, the Channahon Police Department has taken pride and hyped the fact that Channahon consistently is ranked as one of the safest communities in Illinois.

A five-year review of the Will County Coroner's Office homicide files indicates that Channahon had zero homicides in the community between 2013-2017. Having any death classified as a murder in the village limits of Channahon could put that safe community ranking in jeopardy.

On the day of Harer's untimely death, Channahon summoned help from the Will County-Grundy County Major Crimes Task Force. The task force group consists of officers and crime scene technicians who can respond to calls involving smaller police departments that need additional expertise.

Within a couple weeks of their daughter's death, Harer's family said they remembered speaking on the phone with one of the Shorewood Police Department's deputy police chiefs about the status of the investigation.

Last week, Channahon's chief told Patch his agency is basically in a holding pattern.

Channahon Police are still awaiting word from the Illinois State Police Crime Lab in Cook County, which was contacted to conduct a battery of tests upon various undisclosed items of forensic evidence related to the case. It's believed that those forensic tests, when complete, will give the police guidance on making a final determination on whether Harer's death was a homicide or suicide.

Casey told Patch he was not at liberty to say what items were submitted for testing. He acknowledged last week that the case is not being actively investigated on a daily basis anymore.

The chief said he was under the impression that the investigators have not done any recent follow-up interviews with Flores, the apartment building's tenants, Harer's coworkers or her close friends.

At this point, Casey indicated that Channahon is at the mercy of the Chicago crime lab's time frame. He said he does not have the power and the ability to dictate to the crime lab in Chicago to make Harer's case their top priority.

Casey conceded that he's at a loss as to when the crime lab in Chicago will conduct the requested forensic tests and then let him know the findings.

Stressing he was speaking hypothetically, Casey said the test results could come down in seven days, seven weeks or maybe not for another seven months — he just was not sure.

FAMILY FRUSTRATION

On Monday night, Kevin Harer, Samantha's father, told Joliet Patch that the family remains devastated and at a loss for words. Every Tuesday is the worst. It's the day the family relives the nightmare because she died on a Tuesday.

Kevin Harer said he is hopeful the Channahon Police and Will County Major Crimes Task Force are doing all they can to uncover the truth.

One of his biggest fears is that the Channahon Police Department has not devoted enough time and effort to uncover all of the facts.

He and his wife are convinced she was murdered. However, at this stage, Kevin Harer said he envisions a scenario where his daughter's case drags on for many more months. Then, around December, when the public is busy and preoccupied with the Christmas holidays, the police will reach out and inform him and his wife that Samantha's death is being ruled a suicide, and that Flores will head back to work as an overnight patrol officer for Crest Hill.

At no point since Samantha's death has Flores reached out to the Harer family, the parents said. Yet, they had taken him out for lunch and dinner on multiple occasions last year when he was dating their daughter.

And just days before Samantha died, Flores inquired whether Kevin Harer was willing to sell one of his guns.

In February, Chief Casey brought a contingent from the Channahon Police Department to the Fred C. Dames Funeral Home in Joliet to pay their respects to Harer, who was a former police intern in Channahon. Several of her coworkers at WESCOM also drove to the funeral home on Black Road and Essington Road. Flores, who had dated her since last summer, did not attend her funeral service, her parents said.

He hasn't spoken with her family since her death.

"I want to talk to Phil," Kevin Harer told Patch on Monday. "But I haven't heard from him, not a thing. Come on ... the love of her life and I haven't talked to him."

SECRECY PREVAILS

Just three weeks before Harer died under mysterious circumstances in Will County, a similar death involving a police officer's girlfriend made news in Atlanta, Georgia. In that case, Danielle Nicole Walker, the 32-year-old fiancee of Atlanta police sergeant Matthew Patire, was found shot inside of the home the couple shared.

That officer was also inside the home at the time of her death, according to a story the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper.

The January 22 article was headlined, "DeKalb Cops: Atlanta Police Officer Said Girlfriend Shot Herself With His Gun."

Within two days of the shooting, police authorities told the Atlanta news media outlets that the fatal shooting was being ruled an attempted suicide. The gun used in the shooting belonged to the Atlanta police sergeant but it was not his police gun, the authorities said.

"According to his statement, he was in another room when it happened and he heard the weapon discharge," the police in Georgia announced in January.

In that case, the police in Atlanta provided details about the weapon involved and how they reached the conclusion that it was a suicide.

Last week, Chief Casey declined to say whether the gun involved in Harer's death belonged to her or Flores. She had a FOID card and had undergone proper police training on handling a gun, her parents said. She owned a small 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P Shield with a complicated safety lock. Flores, on the other hand, collected guns and owned several different weapons.

Also, Chief Casey hasn't provided any details surrounding the 911 call made by Flores. Casey hasn't said anything about the circumstances surrounding the shooting, such as where Flores was in her apartment. Police also haven't disclosed anything about the sequence of events that occurred in the apartment prior to the gun being fired around 8 a.m. on the WESCOM dispatcher's day off from work.

On a couple of instances during last week's interview, Chief Casey mentioned how this was a "sensitive investigation."

When pressed by Patch on whether he considers Flores to be a criminal suspect or a person of interest in Harer's death, Casey said he has never called Flores that.

Harer had met Flores, who is in his mid-30s, through her new job at WESCOM. He has been employed with Crest Hill Police since 2012 after previously working several factory and warehouse jobs around Joliet. After graduating high school, he spent eight years in the Marines, including tours of duty in Iraq.

Main image provided to Joliet Patch with permission to use