A memorial in front of the Kissimmee Police Department continued to grow Saturday, hours after a shooting that left two police officers dead.

Residents stopped by to drop off balloons, flags and flowers, all of them giving their condolences to the families.

Officer Matthew Baxter and Sgt. Sam Howard died from their injuries after the Friday night shooting.

Everett Glenn Miller, 45, has been charged and taken into custody.

News of the shooting deaths hit the community hard.

Edward Haibon said his 9-year-old son Alex gave him the devastating news.

"When we got up this morning we saw the tragic news, and my son wanted to come up out here," Haibon said. "We saw on the news that they had a little vigil going and a book that we could sign."


Sgt. Sam Howard, Officer Matthew Baxter died from their injuries

Alex signed a notebook at the memorial in front of the police department and shared the special message he wrote to the officers and the community.

"God bless our family and friends who are out there trying to serve our community," he wrote. "We just hope that our sergeant survives from his injuries. We thank you for everything today and we also love our country and God bless our country."

It's a message he wrote an hour before learning that Sgt. Howard died.

"Very sad when we see this happen," Alex said. "It's just bad for us. Bad for our community."

Suzanne Rios said other Kissimmee police officers were helping her Friday night at her job when she heard the shooting call on their radios.

She said she couldn't believe Baxter was one of the officers shot. She had gotten to know him over the years.

"You can't believe it. It's not really real," she said. "You never think it's going to be somebody that you know or that you worked with. It's almost like empty space, like you don’t really realize. It doesn't click and you start searching for pictures just to make sure the name matches the face, and then it does and you get angry and sad."

That sadness is shared with the outpouring of people stopping by the memorial, along with condolences from across the country.