LAS VEGAS (AP) — The father of a woman whose June rampage with her husband left two Las Vegas police officers and a good Samaritan dead visited the restaurant and store where the three were gunned down, saying he was still in disbelief and thinks about the victims’ families every day.
Todd Woodruff of Lafayette, Indiana, laid flowers Friday against the window of a pizza shop where his daughter, Amanda Miller, and her husband, Jerad Miller, killed officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo in an ambush during their lunch break.
“I can’t believe they went in and did that,” he said of the couple who espoused anti-government views.
Woodruff then went to a nearby Wal-Mart where the Millers fled after shooting the officers. His 22-year-old daughter shot and killed shopper Joseph Wilcox when he approached Jerad Miller, 31. The couple died during an exchange of gunfire with police inside the store.
Woodruff told KLAS-TV (http://bit.ly/1qtm3w2 ) that he realizes his daughter caused a lot of hurt and he will never forget the three victims.
“I can see their faces right now,” he said. “I can’t tell them (victims’ families) I’m sorry enough. I think about it every day.”
At the Wal-Mart, he passed through the same doors where his daughter and her husband announced, “The revolution has started.”
He also passed by the spot where his daughter killed Wilcox as he pulled his legal concealed weapon to stop Jerad Miller.
Woodruff then made his way to the back of the store, where his daughter shot herself in the head and her husband was killed during the shootout.
As he left the store, he said it was almost as if he could hear his daughter’s voice in his head.
“She apologized. She just said, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to disappoint you,'” Woodruff told the television station.
He said he never imagined his daughter could be capable of killing anyone, and he blames Jerad Miller for brainwashing her with his anti-government rhetoric.
“We were so against this, that marriage, that I just threw up before I walked her down the aisle,” he said.
Police have said the Millers shared an ideology with militia and white supremacists that law enforcement officers were oppressors. The couple had temporarily joined supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who engaged in an armed standoff in April with U.S. Bureau of Land Management agents trying to round up Bundy’s cattle amid a public land trespassing dispute.
Woodruff not only came to Las Vegas for “closure” but to bring back to Indiana his daughter’s two cats, who had been at a foster home since the June 8 rampage.
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Information from: KLAS-TV, http://www.klas-tv.com
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