Illinois remembers 4 slain in Rockford knife attack after authorities charge 22-year-old man in rampage

National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 245 President Lawrence Steward said Larson was beloved by his fellow postal workers and also in the community where he’d worked for 25 years.

“Jay lived — nobody’s got to lie about how much they loved him,” Steward said. “It is up to all of us to look out for all of us. Jay gave his life in service to his community. Jay could have ran, he could have ignored (the attack) — he confronted it head-on.”

Rockford resident Tracy Smith was one of the residents who feared for Larson’s safety in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. She spent much of Wednesday night poring over video footage from her home doorbell system, her dog pacing at her feet. She played back a snippet of tape from 12:55 p.m. over and over, watching a figure cross the screen.

“Yep, that’s him,” she said.

Smith, 56, has lived near the intersection of Cleveland and Holmes since the late 1990s and said Larson would smile and wave at the front door even if he couldn’t see someone in the home, she said.

Court records show that Soto admitted to “taking out the mailman” on Garr’s front lawn just before he stabbed three more residents in a home on the 4800 block of Cleveland Avenue, one of whom hit him with bottle of syrup in defense. Those three injured victims were treated and released at a nearby hospital, prosecutors said.

According to court records, he was arrested while fleeing the scene of another stabbing in the neighborhood in which he had seriously injured a woman and a man who got out of his car to help her before trying to steal the man’s car, authorities said.

Winnebago County State’s Attorney J. Hanley said the attacks began in the home on Holmes Street. He told officials that he and Jacob Schupbach, a friend, were smoking weed that he believed to be “laced.” He then took a kitchen knife out of the family’s kitchen and stabbed Jacob and his mother Ramona, he allegedly admitted.

After Soto fled the home where he had been hit with the syrup bottle, prosecutors said he broke into a home down the block, with a bat, where three girls were watching a movie during a sleepover. He struck all three with the bat, killing Jenna Newcomb and injuring the other two. Prosecutors said Soto admitted to “hitting the three kids in the basement with the bat.”

At a media briefing Thursday, an emotional McNamara said Jenna’s mother “wants the community to know that Jenna died saving her sister and her friend and protecting them.”

Soto appeared briefly at an arraignment hearing Thursday at the Winnebago County Criminal Justice Center, wearing a yellow Winnebago County Jail jumpsuit with his hands cuffed in front of him and visible injuries to his face. Judge Scott Paccagnini ordered the hearing continued until 11 a.m. April 2 and for Soto to be detained until then.

_____