Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Roommate didn’t think couple would carry out murderous plans, regrets not calling police

Slain Officer Memorial at Pizza Restaurant

L.E. Baskow

Kelley Fielder is overcome with emotions while talking about her friend Amanda Miller who lived across the way from her at the Oak Tree Apartments on Monday, June 9, 2014. She is in deep regret for not going to authorities with her concerns about the Miller’s and the dangerous comments she had heard them make.

She never thought they would actually kill any police officers.

Sitting Monday afternoon in the shade outside her downtown apartment, Kelley Fielder took a drag on her cigarette, exhausted and confused from the events of a day earlier.

Jerad and Amanda Miller had lived with Fielder for the two and a half weeks at Oak Tree Apartments leading up to Sunday. That morning, police say, the Millers shot and killed two Metro Police officers at a CiCi’s Pizza at 309 N. Nellis Blvd., and a bystander at a nearby Wal-Mart. After exchanging gunfire with police inside the Wal-Mart, they also died — Amanda Miller by her own hand.

Fielder didn’t find out what the Millers had done until FBI agents came to her door to search her apartment, but Fielder did see the Millers leave her apartment with a grocery cart filled with ammunition.

She didn’t call police; she didn’t think her roommates were serious.

Now she’s left with regret.

“I know I should’ve (called police),” Fielder said. “But I didn’t.”

Fielder said she had been neighbors of the Millers for three months. Jerad Miller annoyed Fielder, constantly spouting off about the government to anyone within earshot.

But Amanda Miller, she was different, Fielder said. She described Amanda Miller as beautiful and fun loving. They watched “Law and Order SVU” and “King of the Hill” together, and Amanda Miller didn’t seem to share her husband’s extremist anti-government sentiment, Fielder said.

“I just don’t understand how she would contribute to killing cops and all that stuff,” Fielder said.

When the Millers asked to live with Fielder for two and a half weeks, she had no idea they were plotting to kill police officers. But there were hints.

She recalled them telling her they needed to live with her because they had bomb-trapped their home. She thought Jerad Miller was exaggerating; Metro Police officials later said there were no explosives in the apartment.

“I thought he was talking out the side of his neck,” Fielder said. “I was like, ‘yeah right, sure, you didn’t do any of that.’”

She also heard Jerad Miller say that for every police officer he killed, he’d mark them with a Nazi Swastika and place a “Don’t Tread on Me” Revolutionary War flag on them.

Sunday morning Fielder had watched the Millers leave, pushing a grocery cart filled with ammunition. They left handcuffs, three gun cases and shotgun shells scattered throughout her apartment. Still, Fielder never believed they were serious.

Monday, standing outside her apartment complex surrounded by TV trucks, she struggled with the aftermath of her former roommates’ actions. When a Metro patrol car filled with officers pulled up to the complex, she gasped in panic.

“Oh my god, Metro is here too. Oh my god, they’re coming to my house,” Fielder said to a friend next to her. “Is Metro back in my house again?”

A few minutes later, Fielder returned to her apartment complex hoping police weren’t inside.

“I just want to be left alone,” Fielder said.

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