New surveillance and body camera footage has been released, providing insight into the events that led up to an Indian River County Sheriff’s deputy shooting 42-year-old Jeffrey Lee Miller of Palm Bay at a Vero Beach gas station on Sunday night.
According to Sheriff Eric Flowers, the deputy’s actions were “heroic.” The incident began when the deputy concluded a call about an intoxicated woman at a McDonald’s adjacent to the RaceTrac on County Road 512.
The deputy heard a disturbance upon leaving and, after investigating, was forced to act in self-defense.
Surveillance and body camera footage showed Miller running towards the deputy with a knife before getting shot dead.
Flowers was keen to point out that “as soon as he walks up there, he has no clue what’s going on here, and all of a sudden, this guy is attacking him with a knife … he’s drawing his firearm. The guy is chasing after him with a knife. That’s when he fires the shots. The man goes down.”
Miller had a long rap sheet with several criminal charges under his name, including robbery, child abuse, and making terroristic threats, and had an active warrant out of Pennsylvania for violation of parole.
Miller’s chest tattoo, as well as his behavior leading up to the fatal encounter, suggested to Flowers that he may have been part of a gang.
According to Flowers, Miller was traveling to Vero Beach with his wife on Sunday night for an unknown purpose.
During their journey, he reportedly told her that he wanted to kill a police officer in Palm Bay.
Miller’s troubling behavior continued during the trip as he stabbed an air mattress with the same knife he would later use in his confrontation with the deputy and repeatedly attempted to exit their moving vehicle on I-95.
Prior to the shooting, Miller was chasing two men in the parking lot of the RaceTrac.
The deputy who subsequently shot Miller is a 44-year-old with six and a half years of law enforcement experience.
The Sheriff referred to him as a hero, emphasizing that he had no idea that there was a disturbance in the parking lot and that Miller was a danger to the public.
The deputy was not injured in the incident.
Full press conference below: