Las Vegas teen talks about alleged sex assault by grocery store guard
A 17-year-old girl told Las Vegas police she was sexually assaulted last month by an Albertsons security guard while her mother was forced to wait outside for two hours.
In an interview Thursday with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the girl shared her story publicly for the first time.
“It just built up in me, and I was crying every night,” she said during the interview, held at her attorney’s office. “I was tired of it, and I knew it had to come out.”
The newspaper typically does not identify victims of sexual assault.
The teen said she wanted to tell her story in hopes of encouraging more victims to come forward. Metropolitan Police Department detectives have said they believe there may be more unidentified victims.
For just over a week, the girl kept quiet about what happened that July 7 evening inside an Albertsons security office.
While standing in one of the aisles of the store at 5500 Boulder Highway, a loss prevention specialist — later identified by Las Vegas police as 26-year-old Dominic Miller — slowly walked past the teen and her mother, making eye contact with the girl.
According to Miller’s arrest report, he turned around and walked back toward the two, accusing the teen of putting items in her bag, a move that police later would say was a ruse to assault the teen.
Miller faces one count of sexual assault and remained jailed Thursday on $10,000 bail at the Clark County Detention Center awaiting his preliminary hearing on Aug. 22.
After accusing the teen of stealing, Miller told her mother to wait outside but reassured her that if her daughter cooperated, “she would not go to jail,” the arrest report stated.
The teen, who denied stealing, was taken up a set of stairs alone, down a hallway and led into a small office on the left.
Meanwhile, her mother would spend the next two hours outside the grocery store calling her daughter’s phone.
‘You don’t look scared’
At first, she was calm. Miller had apparently told her that all she needed to do was “fill out paperwork,” the teen said.
“You don’t look scared,” she recalled Miller saying.
But then Miller told her that police already were outside waiting to arrest her — unless, he said, she could “do something entertaining,” according to his arrest report. As he continued “processing paperwork,” Miller asked what she was going to do for him to stay out of jail.
The teen’s phone soon began ringing with calls from her mother, but Miller took her phone and began swiping through her photos.
“He told me, like, I can’t talk to my mom. I can’t do nothing,” she recalled Thursday as she began to cry, her voice cracking.
Her mother sat a few feet from her during the interview, clutching her purse. At times, she would close her eyes as she listened to her daughter. She was crying, too.
As Miller was swiping through the teen’s phone that evening, he had managed to snap a photo of himself accidentally when closing one of her photo apps. Las Vegas police later downloaded that picture from her phone as evidence, according to the report.
The alleged attack
On Thursday, the teen did not go into detail about the alleged assault — instead focusing on the importance of coming forward.
But according to Miller’s arrest report, after asking her multiple times what she would do to get out of jail, he asked if she would have sex with him on the floor and let him “grab her booty.”
When she shot him down, the report stated, Miller made a deal with her that if she just allowed him to touch her “booty,” he would let her go.
Scared and still crying, the teen stood up. Miller got up, too, and wrapped his arms around her, lowering his hands down to her buttocks as he kissed her neck, according to the report.
The teen thought he would let her go after that, but instead, the report stated, Miller pulled down his pants and pushed her to her knees, forcing her to perform a sex act for about 10 seconds before walking to the door to block anyone from walking in.
“Come over,” he instructed her, according to the report. The teen told police the assault continued for what felt like 20 more seconds.
Before taking her back downstairs, Miller took a photo of her identification card and threatened to “charge her” for stealing if she told anyone, the report stated.
After, the teen recalled Thursday, Miller bought her and her mother food at a self checkout station and told her, “You can go. Just don’t come back here.”
Miller was arrested July 19, a few days after the teen came forward about the assault.
Records from the state Private Investigators Licensing Board show that Miller first registered as a security guard in Nevada in December 2014. His current registration was set to expire in late November.
It was unclear Thursday whether Miller was in good standing at the time of his arrest. Kevin Ingram, executive director of the licensing board, was not immediately available to comment.
According to the records, Miller was most recently employed with United Security Services, which did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The teen has denied that she stole anything that day when she encountered Miller. But even if she had, her attorney Chad Bowers said Thursday, “It isn’t about that.”
“I want people to understand that it doesn’t matter whether they committed a shoplifting offense or not,” he said. “Sexual assault is about abuse of authority and an imbalance of power, and sexual assault thrives on silence. This is a public safety issue, and having the courage to come forward makes the world a safer place for others.”
If anyone has information about the allegations against Miller, Metro’s sex crimes unit may be contacted at 702-828-3421.
Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.