A 24-year-old Pahrump woman, who was one of four people riding in the cab of a pickup truck when the driver shot a deputy on the night of Aug. 27, claims she is innocent of the charge that she was an accessory to the crime after the fact.

Shawna Millar is in jail, charged as an accessory to shooting a police officer and is being held on $25,000 bail, too high an amount for her mother to afford.

Sheriff's deputy Harry Williams was shot in the leg while making a vehicle stop near the Pahrump Community Library nearly two weeks ago. Williams returned fire, but the driver got away, later abandoning his truck and handgun and fleeing on foot.

Now Millar's mother is charging that the Sheriff's Office mishandled the case.

"After he (the fugitive wanted by police) essentially kidnapped them, they had no way to get out of the truck," said the mother of the accused, who would only identify herself by her first name, Deana, because the shooter is still at large.

"They weren't running from the police," said Deana. "They were running from him."

But the Nye County Sheriff's Office isn't buying that story due to fact that Millar and Vicki Garcia, another alleged accessory, waited 48 hours, until Tuesday evening, Aug. 29 to turn themselves in, after first delivering letters proclaiming their innocence to KPVM-TV, Channel 41.

"She was put in a bad situation she had no control over," said Deana in defense of her daughter, "and now she's being charged with accessory to commit murder. They turned themselves in, and (yet) they're the ones being prosecuted for all this. Because she didn't turn herself in right away, she's being charged."

Millar's mother, a nurse at Desert View Regional Medical Center, spoke up for her daughter behind bars.

"She said all she could do was just cover her head," she said of the suspect's decision to shoot the deputy and the firefight that ensued. Three passengers sat in the front seat with the driver-shooter at the time of the incident, Deana said.

"She's never been in trouble before," she said.

Deana reconstructed the events of that Sunday night based on what her daughter told her. Millar needed a ride to work at the Saddle West Casino, where she has worked as a slot-machine technician for the past two and a half years. A friend -- the other charged accessory to the shooting, Vicki Garcia -- offered her a ride with the man now wanted for the shooting, Jesus Rodrigues.

Rodrigues agreed to drop off Millar's daughter at a baby-sitter's house, for which Deana is thankful for removing her granddaughter from the violence that would follow.

When the deputy approached the driver after stopping the pickup, Rodrigues reached to get his semi-automatic handgun and started shooting.

"VIcki leaned over and grabbed his arm," claimed Deana. "She probably saved (the deputy's) life."

After fleeing and then experiencing mechanical trouble with the truck, Rodrigues stopped near the hospital on Big Five Road off Highway 372. "He jumped out and pulled a shotgun out of the back and told them to 'get the f--- out of the truck,'" Deana said.

Cocking the weapon, the man was desperate. "Shawna thought he was going to kill her," Deana said, since she had witnessed the shooting of the deputy.

"He's wanted for shooting another police officer," claimed Deana, an allegation that went unconfirmed by the Sheriff's Office.

After finding out about the shooting and learning of her offspring's involvement, Deana went looking for her daughter around midnight.

Meanwhile, back at the truck, the shooter had taken off alone into the dark night and his passengers had scattered, according to Deana's account as told to her by her daughter.

"She just started running through the desert," she said. "She tripped and cut her leg on some barbed wire; it cut her pants. She had a bloody nose. She got to a phone and called her boss to come and pick her up to take her to work."

When her shift was over around 2:30 a.m., Deana went to pick up her daughter, which is when she learned of her ordeal. She took Shawna home with her.

"She was scared to death," she said. "She thought this guy was going to shoot her."

Deana said she tried to talk her daughter into turning herself in to the Sheriff's Office, an idea which she resisted. When she returned from work the following day, her daughter was gone.

Deana is annoyed at the way the Sheriff's Office allegedly treated her daughter and herself throughout the incident.

She said officers promised they would place her daughter in protective custody. Dep. John Powell, an undercover officer Deana singled out, allegedly told her, "'I promise you, we'll keep her safe in witness protection.'"

The Sheriff's Office denies ever offering to Millar or her mother any such offer of protective custody or witness protection.

Sheriff Tony DeMeo, in an on-camera interview on Channel 41 last week, identified her daughter by name, Deana said.

From the Sheriff's perspective, however, DeMeo was simply providing the news media and the public with information about an arrested accessory suspect.

Meanwhile, Lt. Ed Howard was interrogating Deana's daughter as an accomplice to the crime, allegedly calling her "a freakin' piece of s---," according to Deana.

Asked if this were true, Capt. Bill Becht, Howard's supervisor, said, "I doubt it. It doesn't sound like the tone of the interview."

In the still close-knit community of Pahrump, Deana said Howard's son and her daughter grew up together, and mischief-wise "his children are no better than mine."

"When you get a ride with someone, who's going to know they're going to be pulled over and that they're going to shoot a police officer?" Deana said of her daughter's misadventure.

Moreover, she added, "Neither Howard nor Sheriff DeMeo has bothered to call back after I called last week ... I'm disappointed in Ed Howard for calling her names, and a phone call back from him or Tony DeMeo would be nice."

Deana had a good word for only one deputy, Mike McGrath, whom she called "a really stand-up guy."

"If you can't trust your own police department to keep their word, it's no wonder people don't want to give them information, because they don't stick to their word," she said.