MIAMI – A U.S. flag draped the casket of a slain 29-year-old Miami-Dade detective who was engaged to be married in just weeks. The rendering of honors on Friday included a solemn procession in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel used two ladder trucks to fly a U.S. flag, measuring about 30 by 50 feet, over the road where motormen lined up in salute to honor fallen Detective Cesar “Echy” Echaverry.
Paulette Darod was among the Miami-Dade residents who had never met Echaverry but were moved to stop what they were doing in the area to spontaneously pay their respects and show solidarity.
“I feel I had to be here. I felt it as they were marching, coming up 10th Avenue, you could see it in their face,” Darod said. “Any citizen who calls the police, they should be here as well.”
Echaverry’s unmarked black police car was parked on the sidewalk outside of the department’s Northside Police Station, at 799 NW 81 St., in the West Little River neighborhood. It was covered in balloons, flowers, and other tributes from grieving colleagues.
A robbery suspect shot Echaverry in the head while on duty on Monday night in Liberty City, and he died on Wednesday at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center — after a five-year career with the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Police officers ceremoniously escorted Echaverry’s casket from the hospital’s Clark Diagnostic Treatment Center, at 1080 NW 19 St., to the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Department at 1851 NW 10 Ave., across the street.
Hundreds of police officers from other departments including Coral Gables, Doral, Medley, West Miami, South Miami, and deputies from the Broward Sheriff’s Office lined up for the final honor.
Local city and county officials and the chiefs of Miami and Miami-Dade fire rescue departments also paid their respects.
Once the fallen officer’s casket was in the hearse outside of the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Department, a dignified honors motorcade escorted him to a funeral home where his broken-hearted family and friends met to mourn in private.
Echaverry was born on Dec. 8, 1992, in Hialeah. He played baseball while he was a student at John A. Ferguson Senior High School near the Kendall West neighborhood and for the Nicaraguan baseball league’s La Alcaldia Municipal de Diriá team, in Granada.
Echaverry returned to South Florida to study criminal justice at Miami Dade College and Florida International University. He joined MDPD in 2017 and had just marked his fifth anniversary with the department in April.
Echaverry served in the South District before he was promoted to the MDPD’s robbery bureau’s intervention detail. He played softball with the Miami-Dade Five-O, Metro Dawgs, and the Enforcers teams, and he was a regular of the Virginia Key Trails.
Echaverry is survived by his parents, Sandra and Cesar Echaverry, and his sister, Sandra Virginia.
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