Jacob Zamora, 18, male, left Rochelle for a quick trip to DeKalb on a winter Thursday and never came home. Close to midnight on January 23, 2020, police were called to an apartment building on Edgebrook Drive. They found him in the hallway at 835 Edgebrook with multiple gunshot wounds. First responders worked on him and rushed him to Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital, but he was pronounced dead soon after.
Detectives moved fast. By the next afternoon, they had identified a suspect and taken him into custody without incident a short drive away on Greenbrier Road. Adam D. Koertner, who was 18 at the time and lived in DeKalb, was booked into the DeKalb County Jail and charged with four counts of first-degree murder as multiple agencies assisted with the investigation.
Koertner remained the lone person publicly accused in the case. In subsequent court proceedings, he later entered a plea of guilty to first-degree murder. A DeKalb County judge sentenced him to 30 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections for Zamora's killing. Local reports also noted that Zamora was from Rochelle, underscoring how a short drive between neighboring towns ended in violence and a long prison term for the shooter.
The official police account never offered a detailed public motive, and no other suspects were announced after the arrest. What remains on the record is stark: a late-night shooting in a residential hallway, a young life cut short, and a case that moved from a swift arrest to a felony conviction and decades behind bars.
