Brandon Miller told investigators he joined the Army to escape the mean streets of Chicago, where he said he was going to “funeral after funeral after funeral.”
He was in the field artillery at Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, where he specialized in operating the computers that guide artillery and missiles.
He had something else he was doing on the side, though, according to federal authorities. They say Miller, 24, ran a firearms-trafficking business and sold guns to gang members in Chicago that were used in two mass shootings and at least eight killings, including one at a South Loop barbershop.
Arrested in 2021, accused of conspiring with two other Fort Campbell soldiers to sell firearms in Chicago illegally, Miller pleaded guilty Jan. 12 in Nashville to federal gun charges and faces eight to 12 years in prison when he’s sentenced May 20.
Soldiers Jarius Brunson and Demarcus Adams, who lived with Miller in his house in Clarksville, Tennessee, near the Army base, pleaded guilty last year to firearms-trafficking charges and also are awaiting sentencing.
Fourteen other reputed members of a South Side alliance of gangs have been charged with illegally buying guns from Miller and his crew. Four of them — Blaise Smith, Raheem Johnson, Bryant Larkin and Terrell Mitchell — have pleaded guilty and were sentenced to five years in prison. The rest of those cases are pending.
In 2022, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges against the men accused of buying guns from Miller and his crew, pointing to the Justice Department’s efforts to dismantle cross-state gun-trafficking rings.
Prosecutors say Miller and his two fellow soldiers bought more than 100 guns between December 2020 and April 2021, when they were arrested. A search of Miller’s home in Tennessee led to the recovery of firearms and at least 50 empty gun boxes, some bearing serial numbers linked to guns recovered in connection with Chicago crimes, authorities said.
Miller sold the guns to members of Kill to Survive — a gang alliance of the Pocket Town Gangster Disciples, Lakeside Gangster Disciples and Cottage Mob Vice Lords — to help in their war against a rival gang called No Limit, officials said.
Four guns recovered from the scene of a mass shooting on the Southwest Side on March 26, 2021, were trafficked by the soldiers to Chicago, prosecutors said. Dontae Thomas, 27, was killed, and eight people were wounded in that shooting near 79th Street and Western Avenue in Wrightwood.
Thomas, a friend of Miller, was attending a “pop-up party” to honor a slain member of the Kill to Survive alliance, officials said.
The guns found at the scene were traced to stores in Tennessee, sparking the investigation that led to Miller.
Another gun sold by Miller’s crew was used in the Jan. 28, 2021, killing of Gregory Jackson III at Studio Nineteen barbershop, 1931 S. State St. Jackson was a friend of the well-known Chicago rapper G Herbo.
Questioned in April 2021 by a Chicago police detective and a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent, Miller admitted he traded guns as a “hobby” but said he didn’t know how they wound up in killings in Chicago.
Asked about how a firearm he bought was used in his school pal Thomas’s killing in Wrightwood, Miller said, “I bought the gun, and then, all the sudden, a friend of mine’s with the homicide. I get that that probably looks bad on me. But I never bought a gun [for] a friend that I know [was] a felon.”
In his plea agreement, though, he admitted he sold guns to gang members in Chicago. Many of the guns were high-priced, quality weapons such as Glocks and Smith & Wessons. On Jan. 15, 2021, for instance, Miller told a gang member in Chicago he would sell him a Glock 43 handgun with a high-capacity “drum magazine” for $850, authorities said.
Miller said he entered the Army to escape a tough life. He’d been kicked out of his house at 17 and went to “funeral after funeral after funeral” of friends. His father, who was in and out of jail, was an abusive alcoholic, he said.
Miller said he was planning to leave the Army after being injured in the field. In civilian life, he said he hoped to work on a barge.
Military court records show Miller pleaded guilty last year to sexual assault in a 2019 case. On Jan. 19, 2023, a military judge sentenced him to 30 months of confinement and ordered that he be dishonorably discharged from the Army.
Also, Miller was charged in a separate federal case in Nashville with stealing money from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, established to help businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic. That case is expected to be dismissed as a result of Miller’s plea deal for gun-trafficking.
