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Special Patrol Officer Timothy J. Stewart of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office died on Monday, Jan. 30 after an unexpected illness. Since then, his young son, Aiden, has been struggling to understand the momentous loss.
To help Stewart's family in the wake of his death, community members have started a fundraiser page to raise money for Aiden's future.
The GoFundMe page, which had raised more than $5,700 as of Thursday, Feb. 9, was started by Aiden's aunt, Jillian Jackson.
"I thought this would be a great idea for Aidan to make sure all his needs are taken care of, and he will have the ability to get a good education and go to college maybe even to become a police officer like his father was," Jackson wrote on the fundraiser page.
She added that because he is so young, it has been hard for him to understand why his father is not coming back.
"The loss of a family member is devastating, but even more so when a little boy can’t understand why he came home from school one day, and his father wasn’t there and was never able to see him again or say goodbye," she wrote.
One of the ways Aiden has been coping with the loss is through his action figures.
"Tonight, as he was playing in his room and setting up his action figures a friend asked him what he was doing and he said, 'I’m setting them up so I can talk to my dad,'" Jackson wrote on the GoFundMe page.
Stewart had joined the Sheriff's Office after spending 29 years with the City of New York Police Department, which he retired from in 2019 as a detective.
On social media, the Sheriff's Office mourned Stewart and described him as a "team leader, a go-to-guy, super calm and levelheaded."
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