Frostproof scarred by killing of three friends: ‘Life here has changed forever.'
July 24, 2020
Steenson moved to Frostproof from her home in Jacksonville about two years ago to live with Rollins and his family. He was a small-town boy with a heart of gold who loved hunting wild hogs and fishing in the cool of the night, she said. His best friends were the men he died with — Keven Springfield, 30, and Damion Tillman, 23. Where one would go, the others were sure to follow, Steenson said.
Rollins loved kids, loved his family, loved his dogs, and he loved her, she said. And even if he didn’t show it as much as he should have, he loved his dad.
“Whenever he was in trouble, Brandon would call his daddy,” Steenson said. “No matter what, he knew his daddy would make it right.”
If Steenson hadn’t been working the night of July 17, she likely would have gone with Rollins and his friends, she said.
The thought sent a shudder through a man standing beside the two women Wednesday, Jack Tillman, uncle of victim Damion Tillman. His brother, Damion’s father, planned to go fishing with his son that night, too. But the engine wouldn’t start on his Mercury Mountaineer.
“It had been running fine all day long,” Tillman said. “Damion just that morning went and got a new tag and insurance on it.”
Why their loved ones are dead, why they were spared, no one really knows.
“There are no answers, there are never gonna be any answers,” Jennifer Dennison said. “But life here has changed forever. I don’t know yet just how it’s changed, but things will never ever be the same in this town.”
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Anyone you talk to in Frostproof was probably born nearby, said Keri Black, a longtime friend of Rollins and Springfield and the mother of five of Springfield’s eight children.
“Everybody knows everything about everybody in Frostproof, and I mean everything,” Black said. “For something like this to happen here, I’m not going to lie to you — it made everyone start to question everything. Everyone was looking at their friends and neighbors trying to figure out who could have done something so awful for no reason.”
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How could this be happening here?”
It’s a question Jack Tillman wants answered.
Suspects T.J. Wiggins and his brother Robert grew up with the victims and went to school with them at Frostproof Middle-Senior High School, where the mother of Brandon Rollins works in the lunchroom.
“I’m going to be in that courtroom every day, staring them in the eyes,” Tillman said Wednesday. “They’re going to have nightmares about me.”
Black said Springfield’s children, ages 5 to 11, want answers, too. They ask her why every day.
She changes the subject, telling them about how their father, a mechanic, could take anything apart and put it back together. About how he walked around barefoot all the time and earned the nickname “No Shoes.” About the time he drove a three-wheeler for miles to reach her house even though the vehicle didn’t have a seat.
For Steenson, the question is what could have been. What would she and Rollins have named their child? What would have been her wedding colors?
“It’s not just that Brandon was the love of my life,” she said. “Brandon is the love of my life, and Keven and Damion were like my brothers.”
She’s not sure where she’ll turn next.
“I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I shared a room with the boy every night for the past two years, and now every 30 minutes I’m waking up thinking I hear him or see him walking in the door. But he’s not.”
