What drove Everett Glenn Miller to kill two Florida police officers?

Two police officers were shot in Kissimmee, Florida, Friday night. One officer died almost immediately. The other died the following day. Witnesses heard the shots and saw someone they believed to be the shooter driving away. Later, Everett Glenn Miller, a former Marine, was arrested at Roscoe’s Bar & Packaging while proclaiming his innocence. From the Orlando Sentinel:

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As six deputies and a Florida Highway Patrol trooper tried to remove him, Miller cursed at them and insisted he “didn’t do anything,” records show.

“I’m innocent,” he yelled. “I didn’t do it, I’m a veteran.”…

Later that night, when a detective adjusted his handcuffs in an interview room at Kissimmee police headquarters, Miller’s demeanor had changed.

“Everett began to cry, said he did not want to live and pleaded with me to kill him,” Detective Cpl. Charles Hess wrote in an arrest report. Hess told him that nobody at the station was going to kill him and asked why he would say that.

“I have done a bad thing,” Miller said.

According to people who knew him, Miller was an excellent Marine and a decent person up until he left the service in 2010. But some of his friends noticed something began to change with him more recently. From the Tampa Bay Times:

A woman who worked with Miller at MacDill-based U.S. Central Command said she, too, was shocked by the news but could see something wasn’t right about Miller through his recent posts on social media.

“We all noticed a sudden change in the content he was posting,” said Michelle Whitt, who remained friends with Miller for about 16 years. “He was posting so many things that focused on racism or were filled with hate. So out of character. Several people reached out to him to find out what was going on.”

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Miller never responded to anyone who tried to contact him about what was going on in his life. Heavy.com got a look at Miller’s Facebook page before it went down:

The page shared a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. earlier in the day on August 18 with writing on it that said, “When I said march I didn’t mean forever muthaf*ckas. Shoot back!” Ali wrote with the photo, “When them (N word racial slur) wake up. Its (sic) going to be some hell to answer for. You only can poke a tie up dog for so long. Once that chain breaks its over. Wake up America before its too late.” Another post said “racist as* America. America is evil.” Only hours before the shooting, the page shared a post about white supremacists infiltrating police departments. There were also derogatory posts about Donald Trump and posts about the Confederate monument issue and Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia. On August 15, the page shared a video of the Charlottesville clashes, writing, “Confederate Nazis…i will hurt you all. You are the enemy. You can run but you cant hide.”

Again, this material was apparently very out of character for Miller. So the question is what happened to him? The Orlando Sentinel reports that Miller “had recently been involuntarily hospitalized under the Baker Act, which is used for people having mental health crises and are deemed an imminent danger to themselves or others.”

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Several reports mention the commitment, which was apparently to allow for a mental health evaluation, but none mention an exact date for the commitment or any information on what the evaluation discovered.

This local news report says the Orlando Police Department’s intelligence unit put out a bulletin warning officers about Miller last month. The bulletin mentioned a video apparently found on social media in which Miller threatened to kill a police officer. Was the video threat what led to Miller’s involuntary commitment?

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