A Bradley County family held a press conference on Friday with attorney John Wolfe, saying they are considering a lawsuit in a fatal police shooting.
Brandon Miller was killed last June 27. The Bradley County Sheriff's office said the victim drove his car toward two deputies, breaking one's leg.
Attorney Wolfe, a Chattanooga lawyer who is also involved in some police shooting cases in Hamilton County, issued this statement:
Bradley County officer David Harper shot and killed Brandon Miller last June 27. Without much investigation, Sheriff Dan Gilley went to TV and Talk Radio to defend the officer’s actions. He even when so far as to state erroneously that the TBI had preliminarily cleared Harper’s actions when, in fact, the TBI’s investigation is ongoing, even today.
This press conference will attempt to pose some questions that law enforcement authorities need to answer. It will also provide facts for the public. Brandon Miller’s family believes that only one side of this tragedy has been covered - that of the Bradley County Police Department - and will use today as an opportunity to present its case to the public.
The official story is the officer fired through Brandon Miller’s front windshield because Mr. Miller was trying to run over him. If this is true, why are there bullet holes in and through the passenger side door as well as a bullet shattered passenger rear window? Furthermore, Mr. Miller was shot in his left temple, the side of his head facing the open driver’s window.
All indications are that many of the police bullets were fired from just a few feet from the driver’s side of Brandon’s vehicle, well outside where Brandon could have endangered him. In other words, the officer fired bullet after bullet at Brandon, though the officer was not in the path of Bandon’s F-150 truck.
Of the three bullets fired through the front windshield, none appears to have been fired in self defense. Tracing the path of two of the bullets is easy, as you can extend an imaginary line from the dashboard (where the bullets embedded) to the windshield to the outside of the vehicle to calculate where the officer fired.
It appears that the shots were fired from somewhere in the vicinity of the driver’s front tire. Therefore, the officer did not need to take the deadly step of shooting Brandon Antonio Miller.
Before the shooting, the county officers patted Mr. Miller down and discovered he had no weapon. They said they thought he was too alcohol influenced to drive, and began an arrest, ripping off Brandon’s shirt when he resisted. Mr. Miller ran around a house and did not fall over 70 or 80 yards of unfamiliar and uneven terrain, though one officer, suspicious of Brandon’s drinking, did fall over a tire. When Brandon re-entered his F-150, he was wearing shorts and tennis shoes. The officers had early on learned that there were no outstanding warrants for his arrest.
So, even if some of the police version is true, it has to be asked why the officer would stand in front of a truck and challenge the driver to decide whether he should obey the virtual order, “Stop, or I’ll have to kill you if you drive toward me.” Why would they accelerate a deadly encounter with a man they knew to be unarmed, a man against whom there were no warrants?
It is the general and recommended practice that the coroner, in a homicide case, photograph the body from every angle. The autopsy of Brandon Miller did not fall within this accepted practice. The lower body, the back, and the right side of Mr. Miller’s body are conspicuously neglected by the coroner’s camera. We have asked the coroner for prints of the color pictures and offered to pay for them. We are awaiting the coroner’s response. It is interesting to note how limited the autopsy was given that representatives from the Bradley County District Attorney’s Officer were present.
David Harper was hired as a prison guard and elevated to a patrol officer despite an apparent lack of qualifications. His main connection was his father-in-law, who held a law enforcement position somewhere in McMinn County. We have asked for his Employee Evaluations, but found that the Bradley County government had no materials at all in that segment of his file, though he has now been employed there for 18 months.