About 150 uniformed police officers stood in unison to clap and cheer as 17-year-old Daxton Alyn Beck walked across the stage at the Thomas & Mack Center to receive his Arbor View High School diploma Saturday.
Daxton’s graduation came just three years and two days after his father, Alyn Beck, and Igor Soldo, both Metropolitan Police Department officers, were gunned down while on their lunch break at a restaurant.
Though his father was not present to see him accept his diploma, the officers were volunteering as stand-ins at the ceremony in support of Daxton, his family and his father’s legacy, the Police Department said in a release.
“We think it’s important to show the entire community that we haven’t forgotten about officer Beck and officer Soldo,” said 53-year-old Scott Nicholas, who is vice president of the officers’ union, the Las Vegas Police Protective Association. Nicholas attended the graduation with his wife, a corrections officer with the Police Department.
“For me it was more about letting him know he has extended family, and that we’re all here for him,” Jessica Nicholas said. “Just to show him that he’s never alone.”
“It’s been just over three years since the senseless murder of these two officers and we don’t want their children to think we’ve forgotten him or his services to this community,” Scott Nicholas said. “It’s very emotionally charging for us to be here and to see his success as he grows up as a young man.
“It’s not just this event, but anything in the future as well, whether it’s weddings or college graduation or anything else,” he said. “We just want him to know that his dad was important to us.”
Officer Tim Gross said that he was friends with Alyn Beck and that the pair worked on the same squad for several years.
“He was just a good guy … a damn good officer,” Gross said. “I hate to be here for this, I have to be honest with you. Because I wish he could be here for him.”
“But we’re here out of respect … to let him and his family know that ‘You’re not forgotten. You weren’t just a one-year blip on the screen. It’s forever.’”