Witness testifies Miller shot her, pregnant friend

It was about 8 a.m. June 11 when Heather Lowe drove her best friend to the Parkville home of the married man who got her pregnant.

"She wanted to talk to him about the baby," Lowe testified yesterday of her friend, Elizabeth Walters. "She got upset. A seven-months-pregnant woman with hormones raging, you want answers. You get upset."

More than two hours later, the man, David L. Miller, finally answered Walters' repeated phone calls and told her to meet him at a nearby shopping center, Lowe told jurors.

"Him and Liz had words," she said of the exchange in her car. "I turned back and that's when I saw a gun. He shot Liz in the head. I saw her go forward. Then he shot me."

The testimony came on the second day of Miller's double-murder trial in a case so emotionally wrenching that the lead homicide detective broke down on the witness stand and needed to be excused for a break.

Miller, 25, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Walters and the pair's unborn daughter. It is the first time a prosecutor has used Maryland's fetal homicide law to charge someone with killing an unborn baby.

A medical examiner testified yesterday that Walters was about 31 weeks along in her pregnancy and that the unborn baby could have survived had she been delivered immediately after Walters was shot.

Jurors were also sent from the courtroom yesterday when Miller asked the judge to allow him to fire the public defenders representing him and handle the case himself. After expressing frustration at lead defense attorney Alvin Alston's decision to ask no questions of most of the witnesses, the defendant eventually changed his mind and the trial resumed.

The defendant is also charged with attempted murder in the shooting of Lowe in her car.

Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Walters, 24, worked as a waitress at the Charles Village Pub in Baltimore and enjoyed a close-knit circle of female friends. She found out in late 2006 that she was pregnant and told those women.

"I was like, 'OK, what are we going to do?'" Lowe testified. "From then on, I was at her hip. ... We were going to take care of that baby, no matter what."

Another close friend, Athena Cymrot, chose a law school based on its proximity to Baltimore.

"I chose the University of Maryland because I wanted to be close to Liz and the baby," she testified, explaining that she had planned to watch the baby every Friday and Saturday night when Walters planned to go back to work at the pub after the birth.

The women testified that they didn't see Miller around their friend after she learned of the pregnancy. And as Walters got closer to her Aug. 16 due date, she became increasingly agitated about her inability to reach him.

"She wanted to speak to him," Cymrot said. " ... She was a little frustrated because she wanted to figure out what was going on with Dave Miller."

A friend of Miller's testified that the defendant told him that morning that he wanted to talk to Walters, but that he didn't want to do so at his house. "He wanted to do it in public," Ronald Underwood told jurors.

Photographs taken from surveillance cameras at the Parkway Crossing Shopping Center, just off Perring Parkway, show the black Cadillac that Miller was driving when he followed Lowe's gray Dodge Stratus into the parking lot.

There Miller climbed into the back seat of Lowe's car.

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