LAS VEGAS - A married couple who fatally shot three people here Sunday - including two police officers - before killing themselves spoke incessantly about overthrowing the government and had ties to the anti-government Patriot movement, neighbors said Monday.
The authorities have not released the names of the man and woman who killed two Las Vegas police officers on Sunday at a pizza restaurant and fatally shot a third person at a nearby Walmart before dying in a suicide pact, but neighbors identified the couple as Jerad and Amanda Miller, and confirmed that a picture of the couple posted on Ms. Miller's Facebook page - him dressed as the Joker from Batman, and her as the Joker's girlfriend - was the pair that went on the shooting spree.
The Millers, who left posts on their Facebook pages that threatened violence, had dropped off their pet cats a few hours before the attack on Sunday with Kelly Fielder, who lived next door, according to Ms. Fielder.
Ms. Fielder said that Mr. Miller, 31, told her he was going 'underground,' adding, ''I gotta do what I gotta do,' before starting to cry, giving Ms. Fielder a hug and leaving with his wife.
Ms. Fielder said that Mr. Miller talked nonstop about his opposition to the United States government. The Millers had recently spent time at the Nevada ranch of Cliven Bundy, who became a symbol of opposition to the federal government this spring for his refusal to pay grazing fees for his cattle.
'All Jerad wanted to do is talk about overthrowing the government,' said Ms. Fielder. 'I thought he was talking smack.'
The Facebook pages of the Millers are full of anti-law enforcement postings and violent threats.
A note on the Facebook page for Mr. Miller, dated June 7 - one day before the attack - said: 'The dawn of a new day. May all of our coming sacrifices be worth it.' A post from May 7 asks people to send him 'a rifle firearms.'
A post on Ms. Miller's Facebook page from 2011 warns that people are 'lucky I can't kill you now but remember one day I will get you because one day all hell will break loose and I'll be standing in the middle of it with a shotgun in one hand and a pistol in the other.'
On his Facebook page, Mr. Miller said that he attended Kennewick High School in Kennewick, Wash.,, and married Amanda in September 2012. He posted several pictures of the Bible and of Elvis Presley, as well as pictures of a gold-plated semiautomatic gun that belonged to the singer and was on display at an Elvis museum in Las Vegas. In his news feed, he shared an anti-government cartoon that pokes fun at domestic spying and drones, and wrote in the caption, 'Do you think anyone recognizes the nation D.C. hath made?'
Ms. Miller wrote that she was from Lafayette, Ind., and attended Jefferson High School there. She listed her job as head of the needlework department at Hobby Lobby.
Ms. Miller's YouTube channel has several videos of the couple in the car with their cats, including one posted in January titled, 'Entering Indy for the Last Time.' In the video, Mr. Miller says that the couple is heading to Indianapolis. 'We are for the last time going through this awful city,' he says. The clip closes with Ms. Miller saying, 'We're on our way to Vegas, baby.' The date on the video is Jan. 4, 2014, a day after what Mr. Miller said on Facebook was his 31st birthday.
The two police officers were ambushed as they were eating lunch at a CiCi's Pizza on Sunday around 11:20 a.m., said Sheriff Douglas Gillespie of Clark County.
The sheriff identified the officers as Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, and said that one of them fired at the attackers before he died, but that it was unclear whether the officer struck either assailant.
'That these people would target police officers is not surprising given that they had associations with the anti-government movement,' said Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project.
Posted by Unknown on Monday, June 9, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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