CLEVELAND — On Tuesday, U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Austin Schwenk was honored with a "dignified transfer" after he was killed earlier this month.
Family, friends, and fellow Marines awaited the arrival of Schwenk's body at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The 19-year-old was shot to death in the barracks of North Carolina's Camp Lejeune back on Oct. 18.
"To us, Austin's a kid," Schwenk's friend Anna Dey said. "In actuality, Austin was a grown adult who accomplished his dream of becoming a Marine."
Schwenk's body arrived in Cleveland just after 5 p.m. Tuesday and was escorted from the airport to Mentor. A public visitation for Schwenk will be held at the Brunner Sanden Deitrick Funeral Home & Cremation Center on Mentor Avenue this Friday from 3-8 p.m.
Dey told 3News she became friends with Austin after he joined "The 24 in 24," an all-day run where participants run one mile every hour. Dey is the director of the event, which raises money for area children battling life-threatening illnesses.
Austin participated for four years, beginning at the age of 14.
"To see a 14-year-old ... choose to spend their time training for an event like that which is almost exclusively adults, it's very rare," Dey noted. "It speaks so loudly to the kind of person Austin was."
Schwenk graduated from Painesville Riverside High School in 2022, and his funeral will be held Saturday at the Riverside Field House starting at 10 a.m. In a statement released last week, the school district referred to their alum as "a tremendous young man and will be greatly missed by so many."
"It's just so devastating that he only got 19 years," Dey lamented.
Officials say a fellow Marine is currently in custody in connection with Schwenk's death, though no formal charges have been filed at this time. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) previously told WKYC it will be "conducting a thorough investigation" into the case, which involved an unspecified incident in the barracks.
3News' Dave DeNatale and Tyler Carey contributed to this report.