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October 1, 2002
PACE -- More than 150 mourners gathered in this Florida Panhandle town Monday for the funeral for 18-year-old Chester Lee Miller, though many never knew the malnourished youth before his death.
Chester died from a ruptured stomach Wednesday at a hospital in nearby Milton. He was a stranger to the woman who answered his knock at her door four days earlier. He told her he had been beaten and starved by his stepfather and mother in Pennsylvania, who put him on a bus to Florida to look for his father.
His mother, Lyda Miller, 37, and stepfather, Paul Hoffman Sr., 38, of Hazelton, Pa., remained jailed in Pennsylvania Monday. They are suspected of causing his death by starvation and charged with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.
"Why did this have to happen to Chester?" the Rev. Mike Poston asked at his funeral. "Why did he have to suffer the way that he did?"
Poston, associate pastor at Pace Assembly of God, told mourners to leave the questions to God.
"I believe in my heart today that Chester is home to be with the Lord," Poston said. "He'll never be malnourished any more. He'll never know what it's like to go without a meal."
An autopsy showed that Chester's stomach ruptured from peritonitis, a painful inflammation usually related to a bacterial infection. Toxicology tests, expected to take at least six weeks, could determine what caused the inflammation. Starvation is one possibility.
Gerald and Elva Swift of Milton never met Chester, but they came to his funeral.
"I think someone needs to show some respect," said Gerald Swift, 65, a retired telecommunications worker.
His wife said it made her think of their 16-year-old grandson.
"It tears my heart out to think that someone could do this to a child, and I'm ashamed, and I'm also angry," said the 57-year-old retired collection officer and real estate broker.
Their presence was part of an outpouring of support for Chester's father, Robert Lee Miller. Chester lived with his father in Milton until he was 16 when he went to be with his mother in Pennsylvania.
The autopsy showed that Chester, 5 feet 4, weighed 100 pounds at death, nearly 40 more than estimated when he arrived at Santa Rosa Medical Center shortly after knocking on Janice Goodman's door. She took him in and called her mother, Norma Douglas, who notified authorities.