Shotgun killed Las Vegas woman whose boyfriend is homicide suspect

The Clark County coroner’s office said a woman whose boyfriend allegedly killed her and reported it as a suicide in July died from a shotgun wound to the neck.

Steven Clifford, 25, called police on July 15 and said his girlfriend had shot herself. But Metropolitan Police Department Lt. David Gordon said at the time that suspicious elements of the death prompted homicide detectives to take over the investigation.

On July 17, Las Vegas police and the Clark County coroner’s office held the Remington Model 870 shotgun over 24-year-old Savannah Millner’s body at an angle that matched the stippling, or gunpowder tattooing, on her body, according to police documents.

They moved her hand to the “packaged” shotgun trigger well to figure out whether she would’ve been capable of pulling it on their own.

“It was determined there was no possible way the decedent could have manipulated the trigger based on where the stippling started on the chest and the angle of the penetrated wound to the neck,” a Metropolitan Police Department detective wrote in an arrest report.

Among multiple bruises across her body, investigators found marks on her face suggesting she was slapped and an abrasion just below her sternum “consistent with being struck with the butt of the shotgun,” the report said.

Detectives booked Clifford that day into the Clark County Detention Center on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon. He is still in custody without bond, and his preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 26.

Contact Alexis Egeland at aegeland@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow @alexis_egeland on Twitter.