Man faces terrorism charge after threats to urology center

A man accused of threatening a Las Vegas urology center and his own mother before holding U.S. Postal Service workers at gunpoint was indicted Friday on terrorism and other charges.

Along with making threats or conveying false information regarding an act of terrorism, Gary Miller, 30, faces six other felony charges, including assault, robbery and aggravated stalking.

In mid-December, Miller’s white two-door Chevrolet Silverado nearly collided with a postal truck near Sunset Road and Spencer Street, according to Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Dickerson.

As Miller stepped out of his truck, he pointed a handgun at two workers inside the postal truck before taking the driver’s license. Miller then used his truck to block an entrance to the post office at 1001 E. Sunset Road, the prosecutor said.

When officers arrived at the scene and pulled Miller from his truck, he was wearing body armor, carrying a handgun in his front waistband and carrying a handgun in a holster with a loaded extended magazine on his belt, the prosecutor said.

Inside the truck, police found an AR-style firearm in a backpack, another handgun in his glove box, a pry bar, two hammers, two hatchets, a wrench, wire cutters, pliers and knives.

Investigators later learned that Miller was suspected of calling and leaving “progressively threatening” voice messages with a valley urology center, Dickerson said.

“Either you take care of this or I take care of you,” Miller said in one of the calls, according to the prosecutor.

In court papers and in a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, defense attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld suggested that Miller could have suffered from mental health problems.

“Gary will be entering a not guilty plea, and we are investigating the psychological impact of a traumatic robbery that Gary was the victim of, as well as any adverse reaction to prescribed medication,” Chesnoff and Schonfeld said.

They declined to discuss the alleged robbery. But in a court brief filed Friday, the defense attorneys wrote that the Seven Hills Behavioral Health Hospital had recommended that Miller see a psychiatrist, and that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and required treatment for scar tissue on his urethra.

The prosecutor said Miller also had sent a series of threatening text messages, with “homicidal ideations,” to his mother from early November and leading up to his Dec. 14 arrest.

“If you tell the police, I’m going to add you to the list, and I’m going to shoot it out with the police and come for you,” the prosecutor said Miller wrote. In another message, Miller told his mother: “Goodbye. Don’t come to my funeral.”

Miller, who was unemployed at the time of his arrest, has lived in Clark County since 2006, and previously worked as a car washer and in security, his lawyers wrote.

“Although Mr. Miller will not make light of the allegations against him,” Chesnoff and Schonfeld argued in the brief, “in light of the totality of the circumstances herein and the conditions being proposed, Mr. Miller is not a danger or a flight risk.”

After the indictment was returned on Friday, however, Chief District Judge Linda Bell found that Miller was a danger to the community and ordered him held on $150,000 bail.

Contact David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Follow @randompoker on Twitter.