Hundreds show up for funeral of young Navy sailor killed in attack on Florida base
A crowd of roughly 400 people showed up to mourn and celebrate the life of one of the young Navy sailors killed in the attack on a Florida base earlier this month, The Associated Press reports.
Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, was among the three sailors killed in the Dec. 6 attack on Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Walters’s father, Shane Walters, told the AP that his son had been standing watch at the building where a gunman opened fire. He had called his father hours before to celebrate that he had passed the exam qualifying him for the watchman job.
On Monday, hundreds poured into a Savannah, Ga., church to remember him, including service members, friends, family and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who ordered all statewide buildings to lower their flags to half-staff in Walters’s honor.
According to the AP, funeral-goers spent little time discussing the attack, and instead spent time remembering Walters and praising his work.
“Cameron wouldn’t want us to keep this anger,” Greyson Ward, Walters’s best friend, reportedly told the crowd. “Cameron brought so much good to our lives.”
“I love you, brother. You earned those gold wings,” he said through tears.
The Navy posthumously awarded gold wings to Walters and the other two slain sailors, Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson and Airman Mohammed Shahed Haitham, who had all been training to earn the badge.
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