Shawn Vestal: In the year before girl’s death, a series of calls from neighbors and school officials

The last time Daniel Herrera saw Meela Miller – the girl he had helped to raise like a daughter – was July 2022.

Daniel met with 8-year-old Meela and her mother, Mandie Miller, for a visit at his home and then at Omak Lake. Herrera and Miller had lived together for six years, raising Meela and living as a family. They’d broken up the year before, and Miller was living with another man in Airway Heights, but Herrera was thinking that they might be getting back together.

“We were going to work things out,” he said.

They went to the lake, not far from where Herrera lives in Malott, a town of a few hundred people on the Okanogan River. Meela played on the beach. Swam in a life jacket. Smiled for selfies with Herrera and Miller. Went for pizza afterward.

She didn’t have any bruises, Herrera said.

No marks on her wrist.

Nothing like that.

“We had a good time there as a family,” he said.

By the time of that family day at Lake Omak, however, others were seeing signs that things were not well in the household where Meela was living with Miller and Aleksandr Kurmoyarov.

On more than a dozen occasions, police responded to calls at apartments where the couple lived with the girl. Neighbors had reported yelling, crying, arguments, banging and other sounds of potential domestic violence. They had also asked police to check on the girl’s well-being because they hadn’t seen her for months. Same for school counselors after Meela abruptly stopped attending classes in January 2022.

Every time, police either knocked at their door and got no response, or left having determined they didn’t have enough legal basis to take further action. Later, other neighbors would claim on social media that they made complaints to police that went unanswered.

Herrera said he wasn’t aware of all that when he got together with Miller and the girl that July. On Nov. 11, four months after their visit to the lake, he spoke to Miller on the phone. She told him Meela had “passed away.”

His immediate reaction, according to court records: “What did you guys do to her?”

Changing stories

Exactly what was done to Meela Miller – a quiet girl who loved “Frozen” and L.O.L. Surprise dolls, who liked to color and was proud of her Native heritage – is not known, or has not been made public.

Even the date of her death is in question. Miller told Herrera the girl died Nov. 5; the couple later told police she died Sept. 10. They’ve told differing and inconsistent stories about her death, and police reports describe Miller and Kurmoyarov as seeming “deceptive.”

One police report said Miller’s explanations for the girl’s death “did not make sense,” and another said Kurmoyarov “kept changing his story.”

Miller and Kurmoyarov are now in the Spokane County Jail, each charged with second-degree murder, unlawful imprisonment and first-degree criminal mistreatment in the girl’s death. Kurmoyarov, 29, is being held on bail of $1 million, with a trial scheduled next March. Miller, 34, is being held on a $500,000 bail, with a trial date of Oct. 2.

Court records don’t specify how Meela died, but they include allegations of appalling abuse before her death, including that the girl was zip-tied into a car seat for hours at a time.

Kurmoyarov admitted that he slapped Meela twice in the face on the day that she died and told police that the girl might have had broken bones in her toes from Miller striking her with a hammer.

After the girl’s death, according to police and prosecutors, the couple kept her body in their Airway Heights apartment for months, running an air conditioner continuously and using an “overabundance” of fragrance products, such as air fresheners in nearly every outlet, candles and burning sage, in an apparent effort to mask the odor of decomposition.

The day Miller told Herrera about Meela’s death, he left work and got his brother to drive them to her Airway Heights apartment. He texted her that he was coming, then knocked on the door when he arrived; it took Miller 10 minutes to answer the door, according to a police report, and she stepped outside immediately and shut the door behind her.

“She didn’t invite him inside and instead suggested they drive around,” according to the affidavit filed by Detective Erin Johnson of the Airway Heights Police Department.

Miller told Herrera that she’d taken Meela to Indian Health Services for chest pains; she said they told her the girl was healthy, but when she took her home, Meela began vomiting and died.

She told him that an ambulance responded to the girl’s death, and her tribe, the Rosebud Sioux of South Dakota, paid to have the girl’s body flown to the reservation for burial.

Miller would later tell police that Meela choked on a strawberry milkshake on Sept. 10 and they didn’t call 911 because it would have taken an ambulance too long to get there.

On Dec. 1, they rented a U-Haul, placed Meela’s body in a casket and put her in the trailer, along with a large tote bag full of bedding and scented laundry detergent, and drove her to the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Their intention was to bury the girl on tribal land. Miller was an enrolled member. Court records indicate that she had told officials in the past that Meela was an Alaskan Native; Herrera said the girl was a member of the Rosebud tribe, noting that both her parents were Sioux from South Dakota, and that Meela was proud of her Sioux identity.

It was Dec. 14, when the couple attempted to have her buried there without any record of her death, that police were alerted and they were arrested.

A medical examiner in South Dakota ruled the death a homicide, saying the girl’s wrists and ankles had lesions that were consistent with being bound by zip ties, and that she was malnourished, weighing just 26 pounds. Court records describe her as “severely underweight.”

The average weight of an 8-year-old girl is about 58 pounds.

‘Meela was fine’

Herrera and Miller met online in 2012, began dating and soon moved in together. They lived for a while near Miller’s family in South Dakota, then moved to live with his family in Malott.

Miller’s sister gave birth to Meela in January 2014. She took over the raising of the girl and formally adopted her when she was about a year and a half old, Herrera said.

“Essentially, I’m Meela’s dad,” he said. “That’s what I was to her.”

They raised the girl together for six years. Herrera said that she was well cared for by Miller during that time.

“I saw them every day for six years , every day,” he said. “Nothing ever happened like what Mandie is being accused of.”

In his statement to police, Herrera made similar assertions : There was no physical discipline apart from spanking and “wall-sitting,” which he described as a kind of time out. He told police Miller could be a “hothead” and had referred to Meela as “evil” once, but he said in an interview that those comments referred to the way she had become when she was living with Kurmoyarov.

He described Meela as a playful kid who enjoyed going on walks with her mother at the local park. She liked coloring books and was proud that she was Oglala Sioux, he said.

“She really liked ‘Frozen,’ ” he said. “She’d watch that – anything Disney, really.”

Herrera, who is a member of the Confederate Tribes of the Colville Nations, worked at the 12 Tribes Omak Casino as a security guard, and Miller went to Wenatchee Valley College. Her plan was to go on to Eastern Washington University to study to become a dental assistant.

Herrera said Meela attended Virginia Granger Elementary School in Okanogan, and that Miller had once rented a movie theater for her birthday and invited all her classmates.

They broke up in June 2021. Herrera said it boiled down to lack of communication, and things going on that he wasn’t aware of. When Miller moved out of his place, Kurmoyarov helped her do it, he said.

In discussing that and the recent allegations, Herrera refers to Kurmoyarov as “that guy.” He said he thought, until recently, that he was just a friend of Miller’s.

Even after their breakup, he and Miller and Meela would get together for visits occasionally.

“I would go out there and visit her and Meela, and every time I would visit, Meela was fine,” he said.

As for the question he asked Miller when he learned Meela had died – “What did you guys do to her?” – he said it was directed more at Kurmoyarov than Miller. He said he didn’t know or trust him, and suspected that he was abusive toward the girl and Miller.

Whatever happened to Meela, Herrera doesn’t believe Miller was responsible, though he said she should have alerted authorities when she died. He notes that the allegations she abused the girl came from Kurmoyarov, who admitted striking Meela and zip-tying her into a car seat for hours at a time.

Even if Kurmoyarov were innocent in the girl’s death, he said, “I will never forgive that guy, because he admitted to slapping my daughter and he admitted to tying up my daughter.”

Herrera said he has spoken to Miller since her arrest, and she “has expressed her innocence.”

Call after call

In the 12 months before Meela died, neighbors, social workers and school counselors contacted police repeatedly over their concerns about the household where the girl was living.

But while the incidents were cause for concern, none involved clear-cut and apparent abuse or neglect, or probable cause of other crimes, in the view of officers.

What may be clear in retrospect is not the same as having probable cause to ask a judge for a search or arrest warrant – and what may seem unusual or troubling to a neighbor does not always rise to the evidence of abuse or neglect required to involve child-protection officials.

The records of the encounters are sketchy and incomplete, based on what was included in police affidavits and prosecution filings. State child-welfare records are confidential under Washington law, and a records request for documents involving state agencies potentially involved in Meela’s life was denied.

Also, the police agencies involved have either declined to comment, saying they do not want to influence potential jurors, or did not respond to requests for comment in recent weeks.

The reports begin a year or so before Meela’s death, on Sept. 23, 2021, when the couple was living with the girl in an apartment complex in Cheney. A neighbor called police to report a possible domestic violence case, with a man in their apartment yelling and a woman crying.

There is no indication how police responded. On Oct. 8, 2021, the same neighbor reported yelling in the apartment for more than an hour. Officers knocked on the door, and the couple told them they were “just playing around and not fighting.”

Eight days later, the same neighbor reported hearing a loud crash followed by crying. Officers responded, clearing it as “a verbal argument only.” Later that same day, officers returned to the apartment after hearing that a female had been trying to run over a male with her car in the complex parking lot.

“It turned out to be Aleksandr and Mandie,” the police report said, but no probable cause of a crime was developed.

On Feb. 5, 2022, a neighbor reported hearing a loud crash and yelling in the apartment. Officers knocked at the door and got no answer.

Three days later, Miller called Salnave Elementary School in Cheney and said Meela would be absent for a few days because of a death in the family. At that point, Meela had not been in school since Jan. 28.

Court records indicate she never returned to class.

A new home

School officials repeatedly tried to check on Meela’s condition early last year. They sent emails and made calls to Miller to check on the girl, with no answer.

On Feb. 24, 2022, a school counselor requested a welfare check on Meela, who had not been in class for a month. The counselor attempted to check on Meela at home and got no answer at the door; police later checked themselves, with the same result.

Four days after that, a neighbor reported that they’d heard the mother in the apartment screaming “stop” repeatedly. Officers responded and got no answer at the door after knocking for 15 minutes. Again on March 2, a neighbor reported yelling and banging on the walls in the home; police responded, but no one answered the door.

Twice during the month of March, a police officer and school employees went to the apartment to check on the girl. No one answered their knocks either time.

Around the first of April, Miller, Kurmoyarov and Meela moved into an apartment in Airway Heights.

On Aug. 9 of that year, Child Protective Services asked Airway Heights police to check on Meela’s welfare, after receiving a report from the property manager at the apartment complex. The property manager, according to the CPS report, had heard concerns from neighbors that Meela had not been seen since the family moved in – residents reported seeing Miller and Kurmoyarov coming and going, but never the girl.

The property manager had visited the apartment the day before with an appraiser in advance of a potential sale; during that visit, the girl had been asleep under a blanket and didn’t respond to noises in the apartment. The property manager “wondered if the child has been drugged,” the CPS report said.

When an officer responded later that day, Miller let him in to check on the girl. Meela was sleeping in her room, under a blanket, in the middle of the day, the officer reported. Miller told him the girl was a night owl, having adopted her schedule since she was working nights.

According to the statements of Miller and Kurmoyarov to police, the girl died Sept. 10.

The final contact listed in court records came Oct. 21. A victim’s advocate tried to check on Meela and was chased away by Kurmoyarov, who shattered the woman’s car window with his fist.

The records include no further detail about the incident.

‘I loved Meela’

From the time of her death until the couple left for South Dakota, they told police, the girl’s body remained on her bed in her bedroom.

They rented a U-Haul on Dec. 1, placed Meela into a casket and into the trailer, along with bedding that had been stuffed into a large sack with a large amount of laundry detergent.

They drove to South Dakota, arriving in Rapid City on Dec. 11. Three days later, they showed up at the Rosebud tribe’s funeral home in Mitchell, where they said they wanted to have the girl buried on tribal land. A funeral home representative contacted the county coroner, who called police, leading to the couple’s arrest.

In their interviews with police, Miller and Kurmoyarov repeatedly complained that they had been misinformed by the tribe about what would be required to bury the girl. They told different stories about her death: Miller described her choking on a milkshake, saying they didn’t call an ambulance because it would have taken too long to arrive and that Kurmoyarov performed CPR on the girl for an hour.

Kurmoyarov, on the other hand, did not mention a milkshake but said only that the girl was “sick” and her death was “tragic,” according to police affidavits. He admitted that he sometimes slapped Meela, including slapping her in the face on the day she died and zip-tying her into a car seat for several hours.

Police said the evidence suggested that Meela was frequently tied up for hours at a time, and sometimes left alone in that state.

Herrera said he is heartbroken over Meela’s death, and that Miller should have called the authorities; but he says he will continue to believe in Miller’s innocence unless conclusive proof emerges.

He looks back fondly on the days before that when he lived with Miller and Meela as a family.

“I loved Meela,” he said. “I loved Meela a lot.”