HOUSTON — Details emerged Sunday of an arrest history for Shannon Jaruay Miles, the 30-year-old man the authorities have accused of fatally shooting a sheriff’s deputy at a suburban gas station here Friday in what officials called an unprovoked “coldblooded execution.”
The deputy, Darren H. Goforth, 47, a 10-year veteran of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, was shot from behind as he filled the tank of his patrol car at a suburban gas station about 25 miles from downtown.
Miles was taken into custody Saturday at his home and was later arrested on capital murder charges. From 2005 to 2009, he had a series of run-ins with the law and was arrested on trespassing, evading arrest and other misdemeanor charges, but had not been arrested for at least five years, court records show.
His punishment after many of the arrests was to serve time at the Harris County Jail, which is run by the Sheriff’s Office. In 2007, for instance, he spent weeks in the jail serving three sentences. Miles’ motive in the shooting remained unclear as he prepared for his first court appearance Monday after his arrest Saturday on capital murder charges. Law enforcement officials said Miles may have harbored a resentment against sheriff’s deputies because of the time he served at the county jail, and they were exploring what role, if any, his past jailings played in his motive.
Ron Hickman, the Harris County sheriff, told reporters it appeared Goforth had had no interaction with Miles and was targeted because of his uniform. In a news conference Saturday, he linked the attack to what he called “dangerous national rhetoric” from activists who have protested deadly encounters with police, including the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York.
Still, the shooting of Goforth — a married father of two who went into law enforcement later in life — has baffled people on all sides, from the deputy’s friends and colleagues to Houston officials to those who knew Miles. The last time Miles appeared to have been in trouble with the law was more than six years ago, in January 2009, when he was accused of striking a transit officer who was trying to search him. Miles was charged with resisting arrest, entered a plea of no contest and was given a six-day sentence at the county jail.
“There’s nothing in his record that indicates that he would commit this terrible, horrendous act,” said Lisa Shapiro Strauss, one of the court-appointed lawyers who represented Miles in his previous misdemeanor cases. “I’ve worked in the criminal justice field for 30 years, and I’d never think, seeing this person’s record, that they’d just turn around and shoot a police officer. There’s nothing in his record that indicates that’s where he was headed.”
Roland DeLosSantos, a lieutenant with the Houston Police Department who has been friends with Goforth for nearly 40 years, said he agreed with Hickman’s comments about the rhetoric that he said was fueling anti-police sentiment across the country.
“I believe that that is what killed Deputy Goforth,” DeLosSantos said. “I haven’t talked to this man. I don’t know what he’s thinking. But I believe the rhetoric has incited people to go and hurt other people and officers. It’s unfortunate. It’s sad.”
At a news conference Saturday, Hickman made reference to the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that “cops’ lives matter, too. Why don’t we just drop the qualifier,” he asked, “and just say lives matter?”
Kayla Reed, an organizer with the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis, criticized the sheriff for attempting to link the Black Lives Matter movement to acts of violence against police officers.
“The movement has never condoned any violence against police officers,” she said. “If you’re in charge and you can’t understand why people are saying ‘black lives matter,’ then that’s a problem, especially in a push toward accountability. Until the police aren’t the dangerous force that black people fear, the rhetoric won’t change.”
Miles lives less than a mile from the Chevron gas station, in suburban Houston, where the shooting occurred. On Friday night, after Goforth had responded to a minor vehicle accident, he pulled into the gas station and was filling the tank when Miles approached from behind and opened fire with a handgun, the authorities said. He continued to shoot the deputy multiple times after he fell to the ground, officials said. Investigators traced Miles’ red pickup to the house where he lives with relatives.
Miles was charged eight times with misdemeanors from 2005 to 2009, according to court documents. One of those cases was dismissed. In May 2007, he was charged with evading arrest, after a police officer in Jersey Village outside Houston tried to detain him. Days later, he was arrested by sheriff’s deputies on a trespassing charge, pleaded guilty and was ordered to serve 10 days in the Harris County Jail.
Shapiro Strauss represented him in a case that stemmed from his arrest on New Year’s Eve 2006 on a misdemeanor charge of discharging a firearm in a public place. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 days in the Harris County Jail, and as part of his plea agreement, he forfeited the weapon he had used, Shapiro Strauss said. The gun, a Ruger pistol, was destroyed by the authorities.
His only felony case in Harris County came in 2005, when he was arrested on a charged related to throwing a television, said Shapiro Strauss, who did not represent him in that case. The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor.
At the gas station, the pump Goforth had been using has become a memorial to him, a place where visitors have left flowers, crosses and balloons. Hundreds of people crowded around the pump for a vigil Saturday evening, filling the streets and sidewalks around the gas station for hours. A motorist handed a deputy about $400 in cash and asked him to donate it to the family.
DeLosSantos was at the vigil, and strangers and neighbors approached him afterward, giving him hugs and thanking him for his service. He said he first met Goforth on a school bus in the fourth grade in the Spring Branch neighborhood of Houston, where they both grew up. His last name of Goforth set him apart.
“It was a unique name, and I would give him all kinds of different nicknames,” DeLosSantos said. “I would call him G-force.”
He said he wrote his friend a recommendation letter when he applied for a job with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Goforth was hired, and after working at the county jail for several years, he started going out on patrols. DeLosSantos’ neighborhood was part of the deputy’s patrol area.
Another friend recalled how Goforth responded to a power outage a few years ago — by handing out Popsicles to children as he made his rounds.
“He was a very good officer, very conscientious about his job and very diligent,” the lieutenant said.
Like other deputies and police officers in Houston, DeLosSantos was wearing a black band across his badge. On the band in small print was a Latin phrase: “Nemo me impune lacessit.” It means: “No one attacks me with impunity.”