Fallen officer’s family finds serenity in memorial to him
Sadia Baxter’s eyes welled with tears as she led three of her daughters to their father’s headstone. The girls — ages 8, 2 and 1— came clad in matching dresses, sunflowers in hand.
“Do you want to put the flower for daddy in here?” Sadia said as they knelt beside a black vase, engraved with Matthew Baxter’s name and a tribute to him as a loving husband and father.
Today marks one year since Baxter, 27, and Sgt. Richard “Sam” Howard, 36, of the Kissimmee Police Department were fatally shot while on patrol.
Sadia Baxter said she often takes her daughters to Woodlawn Memorial Park, where Matthew Baxter was buried after the Aug. 18, 2017, slaying. But Friday was their first time seeing the headstone and a black bench across from it that Sadia had custom made.
Scrawled into the bench are love notes Matthew Baxter wrote to his wife and daughters. One is a letter from Matthew to Sadia. The other is a doodle of their family as stick figures for
his daughters. Matthew gave himself muscles.
“I wanted this place to be an area where me and my girls can come to and have a quiet moment with their daddy,” Sadia Baxter said. “These letters and these memories will continue to be here forever. I was filled with joy at the same time in the mix of my sadness and heartbreak.”
Matthew Baxter was responding to a call of a suspicious person when he approached three men in a vehicle on the corner of Palmway and Cypress streets. He spoke with the men, then radioed for a supervisor’s help shortly after.
About 20 minutes later, Howard arrived, and five minutes after that, a neighbor reported shots fired and two officers on the ground.
Everett Glenn Miller, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was arrested at Roscoe’s bar at 2344 N. Orange Blossom Trail about 10:30 that night. Police found a .22-caliber handgun and a 9 mm rifle in his pants. His friend told officers he was “acting crazy, saying he just shot two cops,” according to an arrest report.
Baxter died that night and Howard the next day.
Miller, 45, faces the death penalty after a judge in September found him mentally competent to stand trial for charges of firstdegree murder with a firearm, resisting an officer without violence and carrying a concealed weapon in a venue that sells alcohol. The man’s family said he has post-traumatic stress disorder.
Miller is due in court for a status hearing in November.
Sadia Baxter was also a Kissimmee Police officer at the time of her husband’s death. She has since become an officer with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, a move already in the works before the tragedy.
Her husband’s wedding ring and a replica of his badge hang on a necklace around her neck.
“I’m extremely proud to continue to put on my gun and badge, knowing that there’s a community that stands behind me, a community that stands behind my girls,” Sadia Baxter said.
“I have a long road ahead of me, but I’m proud to live in this area and be part of this community.”
The Kissimmee Police Department will commemorate the fallen officers with a community barbecue today at Kissimmee Lakefront Park, 201 Lakeview Drive. The event is open to the public. “We want to appreciate the community that wrapped their arms around us when we needed it most,” Chief Jeff O’Dell said in a statement on the agency’s Facebook page. “We are committed to keeping the momentum.”