Danielle Miller

Witnesses said Austin shot and killed Danielle Miller, the 22-year-old behind the register, because she did not open the cash drawer fast enough.
...
For killing Miller, a fashion student about to start her career in the clothing industry, Fuente sentenced Austin to life in prison.
...
Covington said Austin shot Miller twice and Hayes once.

On Dec. 4, 2004, Sue Kovach-Bertele chatted with her daughter, Danielle Miller, about coming home for Christmas.
...
Danielle, 22, a fashion design student, was at work in a Subway restaurant in Tampa, Fla.She wasn't supposed to work that night, but had offered to come in - she wanted to earn some extra money for gifts.
...
Fifteen minutes later, Danielle would be dead.
...
Danielle had tried, but the cash drawer had jammed.

Impatient, one of the men had fired three times at her chest.One of the bullets passed through her heart.

Danielle Miller, a 22-year-old fashion design student working her way through school, died.

The women posed no threat to the two robbers.Miller simply had trouble opening the cash register.So her life and all of its possibilities were extinguished.

TAMPA - For the past four years, Danielle Miller worked on her fashion design portfolio, complete with colorful sketches and photographs of her own line of clothes, and she finally was ready to present it to a college panel, a requirement for graduation.

The 22-year-old senior at the International Academy of Design & Technology will not make that long-awaited presentation, scheduled for next week.She was shot to death Saturday during a robbery at a Subway sandwich shop.

Her counselor and teacher will make the presentation, and the school is expected to award Miller a bachelor of fine arts degree in fashion design soon afterward, academy President Edmund Gross announced Tuesday.
...
Miller had potential to be a success in the world of fashion, Olivero said."It was her determination that would have made it for her," she said.

Miller worked at the Subway at 8019-A W. Hillsborough Ave.She was killed during a robbery Saturday night.

A second employee also was shot, but she is recovering at St. Joseph's Hospital.The Tribune is withholding her name until the killers are caught.

Authorities are saying little about the investigation other than leads are being followed up.
...
Miller was a few months away from graduation, school officials said.She had planned to open a boutique offering clothes she designed.The shop was to be named Sparky Wear, after the beloved dog she adopted from an Ohio shelter, said her mother, who wanted to be identified by only her first name, Sue.

Her mother said Tuesday that Miller has an identical twin, Rachel, who lives with the family in Ohio.

Miller "was a free spirit," her mother said.

Hillsborough officers continue to search for the robbers who killed Danielle Miller, a fashion design student.
...
TAMPA - Danielle Miller was never supposed to be working that night.

But one of her college instructors says the ambitious fashion design student was so far ahead in her school work that she decided to pull a shift Saturday night at the Subway sandwich shop where she had been working to help pay for her education.

That decision proved fatal for the 22-year-old, when two men barged in demanding money and started shooting.

On Tuesday, with authorities hoping that an $11,000 reward would give them a break in the case, those who knew Miller offered a more vivid sense of the young woman, daughter, student and friend they lost so suddenly.Miller's mother, Sue, read a prepared statement to the media Tuesday, speaking of her grief at the loss of a passionate daughter who would bring her fashion work home to show her family in Ohio during breaks.

"This was a child who couldn't cook, sew, iron or cut a pattern," she said, describing how far Miller had come.Miller's mother declined to give her last name, citing a desire for privacy.

Her mother said she dreamed of opening her own business, and her instructor, Marisu Olivero, said she had heard the same aspirations from the talented woman.

Miller worked at Subway to help put herself through the International Academy of Design & Technology, down the road from her apartment off Memorial Highway.Miller had been set to graduate in May and receive a bachelor's degree in fine arts after completing an internship.

Miller saw the world differently than others, Olivero said, and that vision was honed over the years into a senior's portfolio filled with dresses and suits of sharp angles and bright colors.

Her lingerie designs and children's wear in particular jumped off the page, Olivero said.

"A lot of people didn't do the stuff that she did," she said.

She'd link fabrics, like cotton with feathers, that instructors initially didn't think worked together.But after she was done with them, they did.

Instead of relying on computers, Miller painstakingly cut and pasted papers she had colored and designed to weave through her portfolio so that it would have its own style and texture.

She was so focused, sometimes she would forget to talk to anyone in class, Olivero said.Miller never missed class, even showing up at times in her Subway uniform.For inspiration, she relied on her mother and twin sister, whom she called daily in Ohio, Olivero said.

Miller was supposed to present her portfolio to a panel of judges next week as one of the last steps toward graduation, and Olivero was supposed to meet with her Monday morning to go over it.She had everything ready.So ready, in fact, that she decided to work at Subway Saturday.

Instead, Monday brought the horrible news of Miller's death and the wounding of her co-worker.
...
Miller had been ecstatic that she made the first cut.

Olivero said she will see to it that Miller's designs are part of that show, to make sure her achievement is recognized.

On Tuesday, Hillsborough Circuit Judge Ronald Ficarrotta sentenced Doby to five years and 11 months in prison and three years probation for his role in the December shooting death of 22-year-old fashion design student Danielle Miller.
...
As Doby and the others drove off with $70 from the till, Miller, a student at the International Academy of Design and Technology, lay dying near her wounded co-worker, Dorothy Hayes.