The reminders of Sgt. Kennedy Sanders are everywhere in her hometown: From the ribbons tied up and down the streets in her favorite color purple, to the mural painted in her likeness and to the street that bears her name.
"We moved here on this street in 2000, so we've been here a long time," said her mother, Oneida Oliver-Sanders, as she walked down Sgt. Kennedy L. Sanders Way in Waycross, Georgia, with her husband, Shawn Sanders, by her side. "Kennedy played on this street, you know. All of her friends she grew up with, were on the street."
On that street are signs of the life Sgt. Sanders lived and sacrificed when her National Guard Unit deployed in 2023 to a remote outpost in the Middle East, known as Tower 22.
Located in Jordan, a country that is an ally of the U.S., Tower 22 sits near the borders of Syria and Iraq.
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Iran-backed militias have operated in those two countries for years, launching attacks at U.S. troops in the region, who are there as part of "Operation Inherent Resolve" — the now decade-long U.S. fight against the terrorist group, ISIS.
Until her death, Sgt. Sanders' family said they had never heard the name of her base.
"I hadn't heard of Tower 22. I knew she was in Jordan," Oliver-Sanders said. "Our focus at the time, with everything that was going on, my focus at least was, I didn't want her to go to Syria. So, by her saying that she was not in Syria, but they were on the border of Syria, I felt like she was safe."
But it was anything but safe.
On Jan. 28, 2024, Iran-backed militias operating in nearby Iraq launched a drone attack on Tower 22, killing Sgt. Sanders and two other service members — Sgt. Breonna Moffet and Staff Sgt. William Jerome Rivers.
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Sgt. Moffet and Sgt. Sanders had become good friends since their initial deployment.
Staff Sgt. Rivers' family declined to comment for this story, but Sgt. Moffet's mother Francine told Scripps News in a statement that "Breonna was a very smart, bright and intelligent outgoing young lady. She was a person that loved life and made friends wherever she went. You never saw Bre, without her smiling. We don't know what justice should look like. I have thought about it, have asked God about it and I am still just at a loss for words."
For Sgt. Sanders' family, that day in January changed everything.
"When I opened the door and saw two uniformed officers, me being a veteran, I knew it was a serious issue," her father, Shawn Sanders said. "I had to contact my wife and they wouldn't give me the information until she came home."
At the time, Oneida Oliver-Sanders was at work.
"Shawn called me and he just said, you know, 'you need to come straight home,'" she said.
It would be an excruciating period of time.
"It took about 30 minutes, 45 minutes before my wife came home," Shawn Sanders said, "and that was the loneliest wait."
"Whenever I got home finally and saw the two uniformed officers standing here, I just...I immediately collapsed," she said.
Days later, the U.S. launched more than 80 strikes against Iranian-backed militant groups in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for the deadly attack.
"The enemy is getting their hands on more advanced, sophisticated weapons to include better targeting, and so it's always a game of move and counter move, like in chess," said Alex Plitsas, a senior nonresident fellow at The Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
Plitsas previously served with the U.S. Army in the Middle East.
"The United States has always been one that will prosecute and try to find those who are responsible for the deaths of U.S. civilians or service members, in particular," Plitsas said.
The trail of the U.S. investigation into the soldiers' deaths led to Natick, Massachusetts, where federal prosecutors recently indicted an Iranian-American, 42-year-old Mahdi Sadeghi.
He's accused of helping procure technology used in the Tower 22 drone attack — charges that he denies. Scripps News reached out to his attorney for comment on this story but did not hear back.
Federal prosecutors also allege that another man, Mohammad Abedini, worked on the navigation system used by the attack drone.
Abedini was arrested in Italy, on behalf of the U.S., but Iran then seized an Italian journalist, Cecilia Sala, who had been reporting in the country on a journalist's visa. Abedini was later released and allowed to return to Iran, in exchange for Sala's release.
For Sgt. Kennedy Sanders' family, justice remains elusive.
"I don't even really know if there is any true justice," Oliver-Sanders said. "I mean, no matter what happens, we still face the same situation of the loss of our child. And it's not just our loss, it's the loss of her future."
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It's the future that her family is now working on, having set up a foundation in her name.
The Sgt. Kennedy Ladon Sanders Foundation helps student-athletes and members of the JROTC, which she was a part of in high school. All of it comes as her family continues to live on the street named for her, in the town she once called home.
"It's bittersweet to have to come up and down the street every day and see her name on the street, knowing the reason why it's here," Oliver-Sanders said. "It hurts me that she's not here to see it. She would have definitely been proud of it."
