(Update: On Friday, Sept. 19, the foreperson of the grand jury discussed below filed an interim report indicating that the group of citizens tasked with reviewing the case heard testimony from 23 witnesses, reviewed seven exhibits and issued no indictments over three days of proceedings. The interim report states a full report would be issued in October.)
A Kingfisher County District Court judge ruled July 2 that a group of petitioners had gathered enough signatures to impanel a grand jury to investigate a 2020 shooting that left one person dead.
District Judge Paul Woodward ordered that the grand jury be seated after 942 valid signatures were presented to him. Woodward said jurors should meet July 21, which prosecutors presenting evidence for the panel of citizens to deliberate on whether charges should be brought against Benjamin Millis, who allegedly fired his gun into a crowd gathered for a birthday party and killed Christopher Robinson on May 9, 2020.
“I’m very happy. We’ve been waiting for this,” Sierra Robinson, Christopher’s widow, said Wednesday. “It took us five years, and we are finally here. So I’m very happy.”
‘We just wanted some type of justice’
The petition seeking to impanel a grand jury was filed in May by James Everett Jones and Lindsey Jones, who both attended the 2020 party hosted at the home of Trevor Gritz outside of Hennessey. According to their petition, the incident began when Millis drove his truck “at a high rate of speed” past the house on the gravel road, something attendees said he had done on multiple occasions.
“Mr. Gritz alone may have thrown a beer bottle or can in the direction of the vehicle driven by Benjamin Millis, as a way to reprove Millis for driving by his home at night at a high rate of speed, kicking up rocks and dust, lessening visibility and creating a hazard of someone being struck by a rock while several young children were in the front yard of the residence playing,” the petitioners wrote. “Millis was not injured, and his property was not damaged by the object allegedly thrown in his direction.”
After that, Millis allegedly stopped his truck — in which his friend, wife and daughter were riding — and backed it up back to the front of Gritz’s property.
According to the petition, a discussion ensued between the adults at the party and Millis in his truck. At some point, Millis pulled out a pistol and shot multiple rounds into the crowd, killing Robinson. Along with his wife, Sierra, Robinson’s twin daughters were also at the party.
“When all this happened, they were 7, and I just told myself, I was going to try everything possible — since nothing was done in the beginning — that I was going to do everything possible in my power to try to get some type of justice done. So it was me and my dad’s goal just to do every option that we could, and that’s exactly what we did,” Sierra Robinson said Wednesday. “This is what we’ve been waiting on. We just wanted some type of justice done.”
Then-District Attorney Mike Fields declined to charge Millis for the shooting, a decision that frustrated survivors and spurred the grand jury petition.
According to an incident report from the Kingfisher County Sheriff’s Office (obtained by the Kingfisher Times & Free Press and embedded below), Millis claimed the crowd of partygoers attempted to pull him from his truck when he stopped on the road, and he fired the gun in self defense.
“I have no doubt they would have pounded me into the ground right there, the way they were acting,” Millis told Kingfisher County deputy sheriff Todd Davis. “That many people, I had no chance.”
After the shooting, Millis drove away from the scene. Two attendees of the party, Chad and Jared Dowell, chased after him in their trucks. Eventually, Chad Dowell’s vehicle struck Millis’ truck, causing it to spin off the road and roll several times. One occupant of Millis’ truck, Michael Porter, suffered severe injuries but survived. Millis, his wife and daughter suffered minor injuries.
“After what happens there, we sat there a couple minutes and then they started yelling to grab a gun and shoot us all,” Millis told Davis. “And so, (my) wife and friend Michael in the backseat said, ‘Dude, we got to go we’ll just call police and figure it out somewhere without all of us dead.’ So, we hauled ass and (my) wife started trying to get a hold of the police, and then it went from there to here.”
Charged in January 2021 with four counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and one count of leaving the scene of an accident, Chad Dowell pleaded guilty in September 2023 and was sentenced in January 2024 to six months in jail.
Porter and Millis each sued the Dowell brothers, and both cases were settled. Chad Dowell filed for bankruptcy in 2022, according to court documents.
Sierra Robinson also sued Millis for wrongful death and negligence claims in Garfield County in 2021, a case that lingered for three years until she suddenly dismissed it in August 2024, a month before it was set for trial. According to her petition in that lawsuit, Sierra Robinson “ran up to the window of the vehicle and asked [Millis], ‘Why did you just shoot my husband,’ to which [Millis] reportedly responded, ‘I’m so sorry.'”
“[Millis] also is reported to have recited a statement from a ‘Second Amendment activist card,’ which the card purports for a person to read to avoid liability in the event they shoot their weapon and strike another person,” Robinson’s petition stated.
Kingfisher County District Attorney Tommie Humphries was out of the office last week, but he said he believes his office would handle the grand jury when it convenes July 21.
“It will be us unless we have a conflict,” said Humphries, who had served as an assistant district attorney under Fields from 2017 until he was appointed DA in December 2023 following Fields’ retirement.
Millis: ‘I was forced to defend myself.’
After the publication of this article, Millis and Porter both provided statements to NonDoc. Millis explained his experience of the incident:
We were on our way home from a family fishing trip, myself, my wife, our 4 year old daughter & my best friend…with a Jon boat in the bed of the truck. We were almost home when we heard a thump, my wife thought maybe we’d hit a dog so we stopped to make sure everything was ok. A group of men rushed the truck as soon as we stopped and yelled something about us driving too fast and grabbed me and tried to drag me out of the truck, one trying to pull me out and another punching me in the face. I was forced to defend myself. (This is probably the roughest road in the county, and I never speed). My wife called 911 immediately. We sat there for a minute but it was obviously unsafe so we left to meet police at our house a mile or so up the same road. 2 trucks chased us so we had to continue and try to meet them somewhere else. They never let us do that, one truck hit us at the bison turnaround and we headed back south to try to make it to police in Hennessey. The other truck ran us down and rammed us off the road and through a light pole and left us for dead. We heard later they’d had friends hide their trucks to try to make it look like we fled the scene. Thank god the trucks were found and the driver that ran us off the road was charged. My best friend was air lifted out and had a long recovery, his back was broken in I believe 13 places and his face cut in half. It’s a miracle he, or any of us for that matter, survived.
In his own statement, Porter defended Millis:
The original content of this article was written without any representation from the side of Mr. Millis and Mr. Porter. A statement has been taken in an attempt to correct this oversight and more accurately give a balanced view of the situation. The events surrounding the shooting were thoroughly investigated following the incident by reliable officials, where Mr. Millis was completely cleared of all charges and the incident was ruled necessary self defense. There is video evidence taken by Mr Porter that evening supporting our side of the story.
We didn’t ask them to attack our truck or threaten our family, and no husband should be expected to sit by and watch as men threaten and harass his family. While we would never have chosen the way the evening went, Mr. Millis’s actions are what should be expected from any protective family man and were proven justified by court of law.
The last few years Mr. Millis has been attempting to rebuild his life after his successful business and entire livelihood was uprooted by threats and having his name run down publicly after the incident. To have to reopen this and run his name through the mud again after it already being cleared is something no man deserves. We just want to get back to our lives without having to prove our innocence a second time.
(Update:Â This article was updated at 12 p.m. Monday, July 21, to include statements from Michael Porter and Benjamin Millis and to clarify that they settled reached settlement agreements with Chad and Jared Dowell.)
Read the full May 9, 2020, incident report
