Charlotte artist killed on Beatties Ford. ‘All we can do is to be hurt and wait,’ sister says
Gwendolyn Miller was asleep when her phone rang in the middle of the night.
“Gwen, I got something to tell you,” her cousin’s wife told her. “It’s on Facebook. Kelly’s dead.”
Kelly Miller’s mother was shocked into silence for a few minutes.
“What did you say? She’s dead?” Gwendolyn replied.
Her surprise on the 3 a.m. June 22 phone call then melted into denial: “You know, you can’t trust everything [on Facebook],” she told her relative.
But her doorbell rang 20 minutes later. Police officers were standing outside.
“Oh, no,” she recalls thinking. “I know this ain’t true.”
Celebration turned deadly
Kelly Miller was killed in the early morning hours the day after Father’s Day, when a celebration on Beatties Ford Road in Charlotte turned violent. She was 29 years old.
The Sunday night block party, attended by a few hundred people, had been underway for hours. Around 12:30 a.m. June 22, according to police, gunfire erupted.
What began as a peaceful neighborhood gathering left at least 10 people injured and four people dead. Of the nine people shot, five survived, according to police. Five other people were injured as a result of being hit by a car.
Initially Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said in a statement Kelly was found dead, with a gunshot wound, in the roadway of Beatties Ford. Later, Chief Deputy Gerald Smith clarified Kelly was run over by a car. This week, CMPD officials told the Observer investigators believe Kelly was injured during the gunfire but died from injuries caused by the vehicle that hit her.
Investigators haven’t yet determined a motive for the shooting. No arrests have been made as of late Tuesday. Smith has said it appears more than one person was shooting in the crowd and that nearly 200 shell casings have been entered into evidence.
The shooting took place in the Beatties Ford neighborhood, a historically Black community in Charlotte, during a weekend of Juneteenth celebrations. People who attended the block party say a majority of people there were Black.
Black people, and Black women especially, disproportionately experience violence in their communities in the United States. Non-Hispanic Black women are disproportionately killed by homicide when compared to other racial groups in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, Black women are often not recognized in conversations addressing gun violence, abuse, and, in Breonna Taylor’s case, police brutality.
Kelly is the only Black woman who died in Sunday’s incident.
“We don’t know who did that to my sister. We can’t pin anything on anyone,” her sister, Chantell Miller, said. “That’s what’s killing us — all we can do is to be hurt and wait.”
Kelly was buried at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in Matthews on June 27. Nearly 100 people attended. Gwendolyn had not viewed her daughter’s body until the service.
When she finally saw her daughter for the last time, she said, Kelly looked gorgeous.
Her life
When Gwendolyn Miller first laid eyes on her daughter, all she could think was “cute as a pie.”
Kelly was an infant. A little over a year later, Gwendolyn and her husband James adopted Kelly.
“She kept her finger in her mouth and sucked her thumb,” her mother remembers. “She had shiny, beautiful eyes.”
Gwendolyn adopted Kelly and her two sisters on December 2, 1993. Kelly attended Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and lived in Charlotte all her life.
The sisters were always laughing, and when the three of them got together, her eldest sister said, they were “clowns.”
“That’s who everybody expects to see — all three of us,” Crystal Miller said. “So it’s heartbreaking.”
Even after moving out of her parents’ house, she would spend many mornings and evenings with her family at the home she grew up in, on Nations Ford Road.
“She was a phenomenal hair stylist,” her mother said.
“One day (the week before Kelly died) she was over here and we were sitting on the porch and she said, ‘Mama, I know you want me to comb your hair.’
“So she combed my hair and I went to sleep as she was doing it. She braided it, and I haven’t taken it out yet.”
Kelly was Gwendolyn’s youngest child. Still, she was protective of her older siblings, including two adoptive brothers, and reminded her parents often that she would continue taking care of them for years to come.
Gwendolyn can’t drive down Beatties Ford Road anymore, but Kelly’s father went down there for the first time four days after his daughter was killed.
“I just sat there and parked at the scene ... it wasn’t good,” James Miller said. “I want [justice] and for this person to be prosecuted. And we want Kelly to continue to be heard.”
Her dreams
Kelly Miller is remembered especially for her voice and love for music. She sang gospel and pop, rapped, and wrote music.
Her favorites were Katy Perry, Alicia Keys, and rapper Fredo Bang, her sister Chantell said. And Kelly’s dream was to release an album or mixtape, which her sister is still determined to do for her.
“She wanted everybody to hear her music. I found the other day the order she wanted her mixtape to go in,” Chantell said. “I’m going to make sure that gets done, make sure the world hears her message.”
In the video for her song “One Day,” Kelly sings about her potential and ambitions.
“I feel it coming, see it all in my dreams. I can be bigger than everything,” Kelly sings. “One day I will be bigger than everything. One day you will see me on the TV screen.”
Stephanie Hagans, a close family friend who became an aunt to Kelly, said she “never stopped trying” to make her singing dream come true.
“She was a hard worker, and didn’t mind working,” Hagans said. “She was so determined with her dreams and aspirations she had for the future.”
She would often visit Hagans, who lives in Atlanta, and perform there. Hagans said she didn’t realize what a following Kelly Miller had gained until this past week when people from Georgia started reaching out with condolences.
“We knew personally that she was talented and special to us, but didn’t realize there were thousands out there that were touched by her and her music,” Hagans said.
Now, the family is planning to start a foundation or trust in her name to support early-career artists, foster families, and Charlotteans experiencing homelessness.
For now, Kelly’s mother can’t bear to watch her daughter’s music videos or news on TV about Kelly’s death.
“They’re showing videos of her singing and rapping. They’ve seen it in New York,” she said.
“Kelly knew when she was saying, ‘Mama, just watch. One day they’re going to see me halfway around the world.’
“I just didn’t know it was going to be like this.”
‘I think she knew’
Crystal found out about her sister’s death through Facebook and went down to the scene of the crime that night.
“I saw her body lying in the street, lifeless. They didn’t have her covered up,” she said. “She was the last body in the middle of the street, and one of the first ones to get killed.”
Now, she says, “everything is a memory.”
“Everywhere we go, there are memories,” Crystal said. “When I wake up in the morning, I’m reminded of her because she left clothes at my house from when she used to spend the night.”
Chantell was with Kelly at the block party the night before, on Saturday, and wonders what might have happened if she had gone Sunday, too.
“She was by herself that night. I think her soul knew she was going to go soon,” she said. ”She had been trying to make peace with everybody, and she did.”
Her mother has been thinking the same thing.
A few weeks ago, Kelly asked her mother what it meant to “get your house in order.” Gwendolyn responded, “It means cleaning your soul and getting it right with God.”
“I believe she was in touch with God then,” she said. “I think she knew.”
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 10:35 AM.
