Susan Spear
RUTHERFORDTON -- Tarell McMillian, charged with first-degree murder in the Monday shooting death of Greensboro Police Officer Michael T. Horan at a local grocery store, was a quiet, straight-A student attending college at 34, his father said by phone on Tuesday from his home here.
The son of a brick mason and a rural mail carrier, McMillian was "a humble, nice kid,'' said Willie McMillian. "As he got older, he had some problems. His mom and I divorced when he was around 17, and that put a lot of hurt in him.''
Tarell McMillian was raised in Leland, about 20 miles from Wilmington.
He has 17 arrests for minor offenses in New Hanover and Brunswick counties between 2011 and 2023, a Lexis Nexis search showed.
The elder McMillian learned that his son had been charged with the homicide when another son phoned him on Monday. The news is particularly weighty for him to bear, he said.
"I have to be really careful right now because I recently had a heart attack, and I have a pacemaker and defibrillator,'' he said. "And every time I see something about this on the news, my (blood) pressure goes up.''
Tarell McMillian enjoyed solitude, his dad said. "He liked to be by himself, and he was real quiet, silent unless you spoke to him.''
As a father, McMillian said he cannot square his son's alleged violence. "This is not in his nature at all," he said. "You've got to push him in a corner for him to strike. He's not a bully. He had to have been pressured by something else. Something snapped in him. I'm still like, 'What could have made him do something like that?'''
The only guns his dad ever saw McMillian handle were hunting rifles, he said, noting that the two last spoke Sept. 15 by phone and discussed deer hunting.
McMillian said he is concerned for his son, but he's focusing his sympathy toward Horan's family for now.
"Right now, I grieve for the officer's family. That's where my heart is,'' McMillian said. "Later on, when he goes to court, that's when I will be thinking more about Tarell.''
His father believes McMillian was studying business at a university in Greensboro, though he did not know which institution.
"I put all of my children through private school,'' McMillian said, adding that Tarell McMillian was awarded some college scholarships during high school.
With only hours before Christmas Day, McMillian said he would pray and "cry" for the Horan family over the holiday. "It's just a bad situation on both sides.''
(336) 349-4331, ext. 6140
@SpearSusie_RCN
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