Montana gunman gets 50 years for shooting at deputy

In a community still healing from the death of one of its deputies, Judge Kenneth Neill sent a clear message: Shoot at an officer and you’ll be facing some hard time.

On Tuesday, Ernest Frank Miller, 22, was sentenced to 50 years without any time suspended for firing multiple rounds at police officers during a standoff near Sunnyside Elementary School in May.

On May 9, officers from the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office and the Great Falls Police Department responded to a report of a potential burglary in progress near the intersection of 17th Avenue South and 17th Street South. The students and staff of Sunnyside Elementary, immediately adjacent to the site, were placed on lockdown.

Deputy Jason Boyd was one of the first officers on the scene. He was directed by a school playground attendant toward a suspect fleeing on foot. Boyd ordered the suspect to stop. The suspect, Miller, refused to comply. Running to the southwest, Miller jumped a fence and raced toward the porch of a trailer home at 1624 20th Ave. S.

With Boyd in close pursuit, Miller drew a .45-caliber, semi-automatic handgun and fired three times in Boyd’s direction. None of the bullets struck Boyd or injured anyone else. Miller entered the trailer home. The occupants inside fled.

Miller stayed inside the home for approximately two hours with a cordon of police officers surrounding the location. He fired several rounds while holed up in the trailer house but surrendered without additional incident.

After his apprehension, Miller was found to have a single gunshot wound to his abdomen, though police testified they had not fired a single round during the standoff incident. It was initially assumed that Miller’s wound was self-inflicted, but at Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, Miller testified that his injury had come from an unidentified third party, who shot Miller during the sale of a firearm.

Miller testified that he was under the influence of methamphetamine and bath salts at the time of the standoff and had been awake for eight days.

“I was in fear of my life and scared,” Miller said. “I thought he was still trying to get me. I did not know what his intentions were. I continued to run. The vehicle approached me. I did not know it was a police officer. I fired two shots up into the air to try and scare away the person I thought was following me. My intentions were not to hurt anybody, and I’m so thankful that nobody got hurt.”

Miller did not identify the person he believed had shot him.

“It was the biggest mistake of my life,” he added.

At the time of the Great Falls standoff, he was on conditional release for multiple felony convictions in both Washington and Montana for burglary and theft. He’d dropped out of a youth boot-camp reform program.

Neill declared Miller a persistent felony offender and described him as “a danger to society” before sentencing Miller to 50 years incarceration at the Montana State Prison, with no time suspended.

Throughout Miller’s sentencing hearing, a large phalanx of Cascade County deputies lined the outer walls of Neill’s courtroom. After the hearing, Cascade County Sheriff Bob Edwards said he and his staff were there to show support for the extended family of central Montana’s law officers.

“A lot of these people who put our lives in jeopardy think its a game,” Edwards said. “This isn’t a game. He tried to kill one of my deputies, and we’re here to show that we support one another.”