Image via Cape Coral PD.

A person must face imminent death or great bodily injury at the hands of an attacker to use deadly force in most jurisdictions. However one Florida dad couldn’t think clearly after his teen daughter alerted him that one of their adult house-mates slipped into her bed, sans clothes. Dad, learning of the intoxicated house-mate’s shenanigans, fired through the room-mate’s door after threatening to kill him.

When police arrived shortly thereafter, they took dad into custody. Why? Well, dad might have been justified in shooting the naked man while the potential perv was in bed with his teenage daughter, but when the drunk roommate left the girl’s room, she was no longer in jeopardy of sexual assault.

However, it remains to be seen whether the prosecutor will be able to find a jury of twelve people without at least one who says “not guilty” given the circumstances. Then again, this may simply get tossed on the ever-growing pile of “Florida Man” stories.

The Cape Coral Police Department released this . . .

On March 8, 2023, at approximately 12:32 a.m., officers from the Cape Coral Police Department responded to a call for service at 1041 SW 1st Street, Cape Coral, Lee County, Florida, in reference to a shooting.

The call notes stated a male, later identified as Dayne Victor Miller (W/M 2-12-1979, 1041 SW 1st Street), shot at two individuals inside his home through a bedroom door. Mr. Miller called dispatch and said that one of his roommates was naked in his teenage daughter’s bedroom, which sparked him to shoot at both roommates through a closed bedroom door.

Officers arrived at the scene and extracted both roommates from their bedrooms. They learned that these victims rented a bedroom from Mr. Miller. Officers were informed that Mr. Miller and both victims were drinking heavily earlier in the night. Without further incident, Mr. Miller cooperated with officers, exited the residence, and was quickly detained. Officers saw shell casings and bullet holes through the bedroom door of the victims.

The victim acknowledged drinking in excess earlier in the night and stated that they got up to use the restroom, and mistakenly went into the bedroom of the teenage female who lives at that location, who was asleep in bed. The victim got beside the teenager and fell asleep. Once the teenager realized a naked male was sleeping next to her, she went to Mr. Miller to let him know what had transpired; she did not allege a crime had occurred against her.

The victim’s spouse woke up the victim and shouted that the room the victim was in was not their shared room. Once they returned to their room, Mr. Miller approached their bedroom and began pounding on the door shouting, “I’ll kill you,” after the door was shut and locked on him. That is when Mr. Miller shot his handgun 3-4 times into the floor outside the bedroom door in a rage.

Mr. Miller was subsequently transported to Lee County Jail.

Mr. Miller was charged with the following:

*Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon F.S.S. 784.021(1)(a), [ 2 Counts].

*Shooting into an Occupied Dwelling F.S.S. 790.19

The New York Post has the story . . .

According to the official report, Miller told dispatchers that he fired at the pair after learning one of them was naked in his teenage daughter’s room.

The victim in question later told police that they accidentally got into bed in Miller’s daughter’s room after drinking excessively. 

The other roommate, their spouse, allegedly shouted that they were in the wrong room after Miller’s daughter alerted her father that there was a naked man in her room. 

Only in Florida? You make the call.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

60 COMMENTS

    • Also, upon re-reading the article, I find it amusing that the Cape Coral PD used the usual gender-neutral terms “they” to assumedly conceal the identity of the victim, yet include the statement that the “…teenager realized a naked male was sleeping next to her…”

      So we can safely glean that the “victim” was an adult man.

      • You beat me to it. Are they trying to use modern “gender neutral” writing even though they clearly state he’s a dude?

        The victim acknowledged d-r-i-n-k-i-n-g* in excess earlier in the night and stated that they got up to use the restroom

        The victim in question later told police that they accidentally got into bed in Miller’s daughter’s room after d-r-i-n-k-i-n-g* excessively.

        What’s the point in using they instead of he?

        *avoiding moderation

        • Never ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence. Most modern journalists simply don’t know how to write.

        • This is especially confusing when talking about two people. Did the man and his wife both go to the wrong room/bed?

        • What’s the point in using they instead of he?

          It’s an attempt to prevent Twitter mobs and ready the department for the inevitable DEI office that will be added.

        • No doubt. It makes the article unnecessarily confusing. We have norms for a reason. They keep ditching norms for a reason.

  3. “shot his handgun 3-4 times into the floor outside the bedroom door”. Shot into the FLOOR. So didn’t shoot at or toward ANYONE? = not crime.

    Victim/spouse? What sex do these idiots “identify” as?

    Is Cape Coral as woke/loony community?

    • It also noted bullet holes in the bedroom door. I had to go back and re-read because I asked the same question. Up above it says:

      “Officers saw shell casings and bullet holes through the bedroom door of the victims.”

      Personally my first problem with this guy is that he had a loaded gun around after more than one drink had been consumed by anyone in the house, let alone himself — that’s just inviting armed idiocy. Starting clear back when I was a university student all my friends knew that the moment someone popped a second can of beer guns were to be unloaded and separated from the ammunition, locked in the gun cabinet, or removed from the premises. We had the same rule out at the gravel pits we used for a range.

      Just FWIW, one long movie night after everyone was done with finals this led to the humorous situation of people not remembering where they’d put their guns or their ammo. I couldn’t remember, either, but I asked everyone to be quiet and then used two bits of discipline to recall it all: first, from Tae-Kwon-Do, setting aside every distraction (including being inebriated); second, from lifeguarding, recalling every detail like an after-action replay. So one by one I told each person where they’d put their gun and their ammo in the order it happened.
      Next time we got together for a movie night they all pretended to not remember, just to see me do it again, but one couldn’t keep from laughing after I told where the second gun had been put.

      I could never do that now; I have trouble some nights remembering where I set my drink down when I get up to adjust the TV cable to the BluRay player!

      But I suspect that even eight beers to the wind I would never shoot through a bedroom door, or into the floor for that matter!

      • I guess your get togethers are more rowdy than mine, but I usually end the day legally drunk (I suppose) with my carry gun still on my hip, because drunk or sober, no one else will be stepping up to save my bacon when the wolf comes through the door. I have no objection to your making silly little rules for yourself, you might consider giving me the same respect. Mine is that I am ALWAYS armed. Been working for me 15-20 years now, since I started being constantly armed, since I could look back on 40+ years when I was not normally armed, but never once attempted to kill anyone, seemed like a good bet.

  5. Didnt read the whole article however it reminded of my first wife and getting caught by her mom, my wife to be said ” Dont worry about it, she doesn’t care.” And then her dad came up the stairs and marched me down the stairs with a gunm barrel stuck in my back. Fellows it’s pretty scary to have a mad dad marching you down stairs with a gunm.
    I got in my car, mad and scared , and then my wife to be came running out the front door and jumped in the car with a “Get me outta here.”
    She died of cancer, 36 years old.
    I sure did love that woman.

    • “I sure did love that woman.”

      I fully understand. Sorry for your loss, and that you had such a short time together.

        • chased me out the house, wouldn’t let me grab my clothes. i stuck around seven more years out of spite.
          loved and lost. eh, la.

    • I’m shaking just thinking about a gun in the back! I got attacked by a lowlife wielding a 2×4 with some nails in the end and that was bad enough.

      Cancer at 36? Dang, man, that’s raw. I’ve lost two family members to cancer, but (to borrow a scripture phrase) ‘the wife of your youth’? Hope you’re holding up; I’d be pissed at God for sure.

    • “I sure did love that woman.“

      I don’t doubt that one little bit, and I bet you still do.

      “The only time
      I wish you weren’t gone
      Is once a day, every day, all day long”

  6. Florida man=redneck=hold my beer and watch this.
    Not a lot of difference between those in my mind.

    • Not just Florida: I was on a campout with college friends who’d invited some other friends, out on an island in the middle of a reservoir — chosen by the GFs on the premise that surrounded by a lake the ‘boys’ wouldn’t be able to wander off and do anything too stupid. That didn’t work out so well; I don’t remember how far we were into the keg, but at one point one guy had just split a chunk of wood and tossed it on the fire, and another guy grabbed the axe and said, word for word, “Hold my beer and watch this” — and he threw the axe, which went spinning through the air right over our outdoor kitchen, right past two of the gals sitting on a small tree stump, and smack into the big tree stump everyone’s gear packs were sitting on. I’ll give him this much: that axe flew straight and true, not touching any of the obstacles, and embedded itself into that stump hard enough it took two guys to get it free.
      At which point one of them, hefting the axe, said, “Hold my beer and watch this”.
      He got thrown in the lake by the gals.

        • Oh, it’s true all right. And I was the one the gals decided should keep the rest in line!
          So I told them to move the outdoor kitchen and get off the small stump, used a piece of charcoal to draw a target on the big stump, and turned it into a context with rules.
          I figured they were going to keep doing stupid stuff unless distracted, and an axe-throwing contest seemed appropriate.
          Until one guy missed high and the axe vanished into the trees.
          If I’d been more alert I would have said, “Hold my beer and watch this”.

  7. I remember when one of Bloomberg’s “Mayors” fired some shots into the floor when he had a falling-out with his boyfriend. Never did hear what happened afterwards.

    • “I would have castrated him”

      He felt threatened and fired, he can’t help it if he was a lousy shot and hit his junk.

      Not guilty… 🙂

    • I had that same thought. OTOH, there’s a solution to that I learned at a university frat party when a guy got out of hand: two of the frat officers got him to take two extra-strength Benadryl, which knocked him out till past noon the next day.

      • A few more Benadryl’s and the guy will be drunk and tripping balls until past noon the next day.

        • You sure got it right on the tripping part, my one experiment with it was not fun, my thoughts got chopped up into sub-second chunks.

        • Yikes. I only know one person, to my knowledge, that did this.

          They read about it on some website that basically said it worked but that it was not recommended. Noted for a high chance of freaking out and getting arrested.

          He freaked out and got arrested about six hours after taking the pills.

        • had a gal got me to take two, bad summer snurfles. pleasant ride to work, had more coffee, oops. kept asking customers to repeat themselves, thought train lost by time i returned attention to microfiche. bossman laughed made me sit down for half hour. weird.

        • Jesus, does everybody just imagine that such drugs are simply everywhere? I wouldn’t even know how to find a Benadryl. And in near 77 years I have never taken one and likely never will.

        • @Larryin TX–
          Benadryl is on pretty much any grocery store’s shelf right along with Chlortrimeton and Allegra. So yes, they are “simply everywhere”.

  10. Says a whole lot about a so called dad who would allow nitwits drunk or not to be anywhere around his daughter. Hopefully a judge will do something about the errow of his way.

    • I think more to the point, why a dad wouldn’t have installed a lock and dead bolt on her door before allowing anyone else to move in!
      That’s just good sense that I learned as a lifeguard: never assume people will behave themselves; always plan for seriously stupid. There are so many things that can go wrong from stupidity when strangers are living in the same house as teens, I’d have had locks on the inside of bedrooms, bathrooms, and pantry!

  11. I am having a really hard time believing that someone could be so drunk as to not know what bedroom they are in, which bed they are in, and who is in the bed with them. It seems to me that it would require an amount of alcohol which would be promptly fatal.

    Now having said that, I am aware of someone who was very drunk and drove his car up over the parking lot curb and onto the grass of a police station–claiming that he thought it was a rest area on the highway. So, who knows, maybe it is possible to be that drunk.

    • I was once so drunk that the following occurred.
      While riding in the back of a pickup drinking beer, my friend vomited on a couple of Hells Angels that were obviously following to close behind us. The Hell’s Angels were irate. I attempted to diffuse the conflict by hosing them off. Fortunately; I had been drinking a lot of beer so I had plenty of urine to hose them off with. The Hell’s Angels went from being irate to enraged. However; the Hell’s Angels bravely ran away.

      I guess that I must have intimidated them.

    • People walk into the wrong house while drunk and sleep on the couch. Happens all the time.

      Yes, it’s easily possible to be that drunk.

      • my identical twin sister in law had more than one opportunity to direct my birthday suit to the other bedroom.
        i met her first.

  12. “Victim”. Sure.

    Being drunk isn’t an excuse. For anything. I say hang the “victim” by his neck until dead to prevent the pervert from raping a child in the future.

    That said, if you’re a father, be very careful who you invite into your home, and that includes family.

    The vast majority of child molestation occurs from a trusted family member.

      • one time in the back of a cube truck loaded with idiots and dirt bikes, we had to check monica while she was sleeping in neil’s arms. we told him not to bring her.

    • From observation while a university student, if the restroom is at the end of the hall, finding it doesn’t require any significant degree of sobriety — while counting doors to get back to your own room can be as challenging as a surprise exam.

  18. Very confusing. “The victim’s spouse woke up the victim and shouted that the room the victim was in was not their shared room.” Who is the victim? The teenager? The naked man?, The door? The Floor?

  19. As reported, 2 people behind a closed door, one of them presumably innocent of any wrongdoing, and the guy shoots through the door not knowing which he might hit? Seems clearly negligent in not clearly identifying his intended target.

  20. The point is surely not whether he is guilty or not but if the JURY finds him guilty or not and depends on exactly what he is charged with. From attempted murder to careless discharge. The victim apparently left as soon as it got through his addled brain that he had made a very bad mistake and I can understand the distress the kid felt but that’s no excuse to shoot somebody.

  21. So glad I had a son and not a daughter. A bunch of drunks, and a father with anger management issues, and we get this. I’m glad the girl was not harmed, but it doesn’t sound like she was in any danger, aside from maybe the drunk puking on her.

  22. “Well, dad might have been justified in shooting the naked man while the potential perv was in bed with his teenage daughter, but when the drunk roommate left the girl’s room, she was no longer in jeopardy of sexual assault.”

    So, how far away from your daughter’s bed would a man who climbed into it with her, nude, have to be for you to be comfortable? It doesn’t sound like very far at all.

  23. Lots of issues with this story. To begin with, the shooter was renting a ‘bedroom’ to the victim? A bedroom? Not the house or a section of the house, but the bedroom. He has a teen aged daughter but allowed strangers to rent a room in his house? Secondly, he was drinking (and who know what else) with the victim, with both of them getting extremely intoxicated. I own a rent house. I don’t go out drinking with the tenant. And then according to the story (and this is where the timeline gets bit confusing) the daughter realizes someone is in her bed, gets out of bed and goes to her fathers room, wakes him up and tells him. somewhere in this sequence of events the wife of the victim wakes up, gets out of her bed, finds the husband in the other bed, wakes him up and drags him back to their bed. There is no report that the victim, assaulted, touched, or in any way harmed the daughter. The father, ( who was also inebriated) jumps out of bed and shoots holes in the door of his house. I didn’t see where he shot holes in floor, thought I heard that in another report on this. Sorry for the rambling but the father should be charged with some type of felony because he should not have a firearm because he doesn’t have any idea how to use it legally. IMHO

Comments are closed.