Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Killers linked to white supremacy
Officials say couple killed 2 cops, left manifesto with swastika at the scene
A disillusioned Indiana couple fired the shots that killed two Las Vegas police officers and a Wal-Mart shopper.
LAS VEGAS — Officials on Monday identified Jerad and Amanda Miller, a young married couple from Indiana who acquaintances said had grown increasingly disillusioned with police and government officials, as the shooters in the rampage that left two police officers and a Wal-Mart shopper dead.
The two Las Vegas police officers, both fathers, had sat down to lunch at a pizza restaurant Sunday when Jerad Miller, 31, walked in, looked around and went back outside where his wife, Amanda, joined him and they then entered the eatery, officials said.
They walked past the two officers, Alyn Beck, 41, and Igor Soldo, 31, and Jerad Miller yelled, “This is a revolution!” Las Vegas Assistant Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters at a Monday news conference. Jerad Miller then pulled out a handgun and shot Soldo once in the back of the head, killing him, the start of a rampage thatwould leave five people dead, including the shooters.
The couple fired at least five times before killing Beck. He never had a chance to fire.
After the officers were shot, Jerad Miller covered them with a Gadsden flag — a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, “Don’t Tread on Me” — and placed a manifesto with a swastika symbol on one officer’s body, according to police officials. The flag, which dates from the American Revolution, has been adopted by some ultra-conservative and libertarian groups.
The suspects then went to a nearby Wal-Mart store, where theywere confronted by an armed shopper, who was shot by Amanda Miller, authorities said. The Clark County coroner’s office identified the dead man as Joseph Robert Wilcox, 31, of Las Vegas.
The attack was apparently random and police said the couple seem to have acted alone. The acts were believed to have been deliberate, McMahill said. “I can tell you there’s no doubt that the suspects have some apparent ideology along the lines of militia and white supremacist,” he said.
The couple had visited the Nevada standoff between the federal Bureau of Land Management and cattle rancher Cliven Bundy, an incident that became a lightning rod for armed libertarians.
Bundy said Monday that he did not knowthe shooters.
Jerad Miller faced criminal charges in the states of Washington and Indiana before he and his wife moved to Las Vegas in January. They both worked as costumed performers and had their pictures taken with tourists. Amanda Miller also worked at a nearby Hobby Lobby.
Officials said that based on surveillance videos, they have assembled a timeline of the attack. From the pizza restaurant, the couple grabbed their backpacks and walked to the nearby WalMart, entering through the front door. Jerad Miller fired one shot into the air and told everyone to get out and that the revolution had arrived. Amanda placed the backpacks into a shopping cart.
Wilcox carried a concealed weapon as he shopped. He moved to confront Jerad Miller, but apparently didn’t realize that Amanda was with the gunman. As Wilcox confronted Jerad, Amanda fired into his ribs and he collapsed, dead, police said.
The couple gathered items from around the store and essentially built a fort of products around themselves. From that position they exchanged fire with police officials and exchanged some words, police said.
Wounded, Amanda took a handgun and fired several rounds into Jerad’s head before taking her own life with a gunshot to her head, officials said. Neighbors at the Oak Tree Apartments where the couple lived were trying to figure out how the couple had come to such an end.
“At first he was OK, then the Bundy ranch thing happened and things changed,” said Larry Burnette, a neighbor of the couple. “Him and his wife went out there carrying guns. I tried to tell them not to go, but theywere so against the police. They wanted the cops to go away and leave the Bundys alone.”
Kelley Fielder, who also lived in the apartment complex, said the Millers moved in with her about three weeks before the rampage “because they said they wanted the government to find their apartment intact.”
During the standoff at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, the trio visited for three days, Fielder said.
She said the couple dropped her off in Las Vegas and went back to the ranch, but they returned to the apartment complex a few days later.
“He got kicked off because he was a felon,” Fielder said. “Jerad was really upset.”
When contacted by Tribune Newspapers, Bundy said that neither he nor his family asked the Miller couple to leave the militia camp outside his ranch, as has been reported in the media. He did not rule out that someone in the militia encampment near the ranch asked the couple to leave.