Vinton Miller had never seen snow before. But by his second day of work at Palisades Tahoe, the 29-year-old Jamaican was in the thick of it.
While learning how to operate a snow blower, Miller accidentally chewed up a plastic storage container.
“The grin that came across his face was one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face,” a former coworker said. “You could tell that he just really enjoyed being out there.”
Within days, Miller, who was in Tahoe on a temporary H-2B work visa, learned to ski and fell in love with the sport. Like many international workers who are brought to the expensive, labor-deficient area to do seasonal jobs, Miller worked multiple gigs in often difficult conditions.
After finishing his shift at the ski resort, he’d take the bus to a restaurant on the Lake Tahoe waterfront, where he bussed tables and washed dishes. But coworkers remember him carrying his load lightly.
“He was a real happy guy,” one said. “You didn’t see him with a frown on his face. You didn’t see him in a bad mood.”
But when Miller returned in November 2023 for his second season, he wasn’t the same guy.
He told a coworker that doctors back home had changed his medication and that he didn’t feel right. One day, someone reported that Miller was acting paranoid on the shuttle to the lodge at Alpine, which is part of the Palisades resort. He believed that people in Jamaica were trying to hurt him and that those around him would be hurt too. On Dec. 15, Placer County sheriff’s deputies chased Miller around the Alpine parking lot as he screamed “Shoot me,” according to police reports. They placed him on a psychiatric hold in a hospital for several days.
On Jan. 25, 2024, Palisades staff called 911 to report that Miller was acting “irrationally” and appeared to be in psychosis. He was again transported to the hospital but allowed to leave after officials determined he did not meet the criteria for a psychiatric hold. The next morning, Miller allegedly threatened a Palisades housing manager with a kitchen knife and stole the man’s company truck.
Less than 30 minutes later, a California State Parks officer shot him in the back outside the resort’s corporate offices in Olympic Valley. Miller died at the scene.
“Knowing the man that he was, he wasn’t a violent guy,” the former coworker said. “Now everybody’s only going to know about him because of the worst day of his life.”
Police files and other documents obtained by The Standard through public records requests shed new light on the shooting and the events leading up to it, raising questions about Palisades’ treatment of Miller and the coordination — or lack thereof — among the law enforcement agencies involved.
Miller’s family contends that the parks officer who killed him was out of his jurisdiction and that responding police should have taken the reported mental health struggles into account. According to the documents, Miller was diagnosed with schizophrenia in December 2023 at Reno Behavioral Health Hospital after deputies placed him on a psychiatric hold, known as a 5150. While at the facility Dec. 19, he allegedly threatened to harm hospital staff and his wife, causing Placer sheriff’s deputies to take another report.
“They knew about it, and that’s what makes this so much more egregious,” said Sheila Mohsini, an attorney for Miller’s family.
On May 15, his family sued the state parks ranger who shot him, Matthew Yarbrough, and a California Highway Patrol officer, Clayton Guillemin, along with state parks, CHP, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office, and others for wrongful death. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges negligence, excessive force, and other civil rights violations. Miller’s wife, child, and estate are listed as plaintiffs.
“The truth of Vinton’s killing is all on video,” Mohsini said in a statement Wednesday. “While nothing will bring back Vinton, this is the first step on the journey to justice for [him] and his family. It is important the truth be told, and there be accountability for those who ruthlessly and wrongly ended his life.”
State parks, CHP, and the Placer County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit. Yarbrough and Guillemin did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Why are you calling the cops on a Black guy in distress?’
Two of Miller’s former coworkers at Palisades, who spoke to The Standard on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said they wished the ski resort had provided him with mental health services in the weeks before his killing.
Those who worked closely with Miller were offered the opportunity to speak with counselors after the shooting, one worker recalled. “I wanted to laugh in their face,” he said. “Obviously, they didn’t offer it to Vinton. … They let the police and the hospitals deal with him.”
Another former employee who supervised Miller during the 2022-23 season and was aware of his mental health struggles the following year said he thought the resort “grossly mishandled and neglected the entire situation.”
“Why are you calling the cops on a Black guy that is fucking in distress?” he said. “Do you watch the news? They’re killing them. Like, handle it a different way.”
It’s unclear how many times Palisades called the sheriff’s office for help with Miller. Investigative documents cited previous police contacts with him, but the sheriff’s office declined to share those reports or to comment on other incidents, citing medical privacy laws.
Palisades is owned and operated by Alterra Mountain Company, a Denver-based conglomerate that itself is a joint venture overseen by a pair of private equity firms: KSL Capital Partners and Henry Crown and Company. According to Moody’s Investors Service, Alterra, which runs over a dozen ski resorts, generated $1.7 billion in revenue between January 2022 and January 2023. Since the 2020-21 season, the price of a lift ticket at Palisades has increased by almost 82% — from $159 to $289 for an adult day pass.
Miller’s former manager estimated that about 75% of Palisades employees during the ski season are in Tahoe on international work visas. This is common practice in the ski industry, which for decades has relied on foreign workers to offset shortages of domestic laborers, who are less willing to take short-term seasonal jobs with few benefits or job protections in areas with soaring housing costs and dwindling supplies of rental units.
The former Palisades manager said that of the 40 or so people on his team in 2022-23, only 10 or 12 were U.S. citizens. The rest were there on H-2B or J-1 visas, nonimmigrant work permits for temporary, seasonal workers or foreign exchange visitors.
The former manager said Palisades provides few resources to employees on visas. Many migrant workers who work at the ski resorts rely on the Tahoe Truckee Area Regional Transit system to get to work. And when TART shuts down because of a major snowstorm, it can take them hours to get home.
“I ended up driving a whole bunch of them home throughout the season,” the former employee said.
Though Miller and his wife, who was also working at Alpine on a visa, secured a place to live through Palisades, visa holders often have to fend for themselves in what is a difficult and expensive housing market, even for locals. Daphna Cisneros, a student from Peru who worked last winter at a restaurant at another ski resort, Northstar, lived in a four-bedroom house with 14 other J-1 holders. Originally, there were 12 of them, she said, but they added a few more to reduce the monthly rent from $800 to $650 per person.
At the start of the season, Cisneros earned $15.50 an hour before getting a bump to $16. She said she felt “lucky” because she typically worked five days a week, noting that she’d heard about other visa holders working only eight hours total.
“A lot of J-1s have a lot of days off,” Cisneros said.
The owner of the restaurant Miller worked at during his first season said visa holders often ask him for work until the resorts give them full-time schedules. When the holidays pass and the mountain slows down, they often return to the restaurant.
“They’ll come back, struggling, like, ‘Hey, I really need to work. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just got laid off, and I got my rent to pay,’” he said.
The restaurant operator, who requested anonymity to protect his business, acknowledged that resorts need to operate efficiently. If there isn’t enough snow, they can’t run lifts. If there’s an abundance of snow, they need to be able to staff up rapidly — which is where foreign workers come in.
“All the big resorts, they’re using these [visa workers],” the restaurant owner said. “They bring them in, they sponsor them, and then they only work them for a little bit of time, and who knows what their expectations are.”
When he heard about Miller allegedly stealing a housing manager’s truck, leading police on a chase, and ending up dead, he wondered if Palisades had exploited him to the point that he snapped.
“There had to be something wrong,” he said. “Why would he flip a switch?”
‘Not in his right mind’
In an interview with sheriff’s officials after the shooting, Miller’s wife, Stacie Miller, said he had been prescribed medication at the Reno hospital, but she didn’t think he was taking it. A backpack discovered in Miller’s unit after his death contained an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia, a drug often used for bipolar disorder, and an antidepressant. In the month before the shooting, Miller was regularly talking to himself and would stay awake at night, occasionally screaming, his wife said.
The night before he was killed, Miller was awake all night looking at his phone, Stacie said. When she woke around 6:30 a.m., Miller seemed paranoid. “Vinton told me he wanted to go to work, but I convinced him to stay home,” she said, according to a police report.
Miller then asked a neighbor if he could borrow a car. The neighbor refused but offered him a ride to work. Miller declined. The neighbor told officials Miller seemed “cold” and “out of it.”
“That was the last time I saw him before I heard what happened,” the neighbor said, according to a summary of the interview.
At 9:19 a.m., the property manager of Tahoe Vistana Inn, a housing complex for Palisades employees, called 911 to report that a tenant, whom he identified as Miller, had threatened him with a knife and taken his truck. Within minutes, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office and CHP started receiving reports about a reckless driver in a Palisades truck. “I almost just got run off the road,” one caller told dispatchers. A couple called in to report seeing a passenger jump out of the vehicle at a roundabout in Tahoe City. The passenger, a Palisades employee whom Miller had picked up from a highway bus stop, said he was afraid he’d be killed because of how Miller was driving.
At 9:40 a.m., Stacie called 911. She told dispatchers that her husband was “in danger,” had schizophrenia, and didn’t know where he was. “He said he’s driving somewhere, somebody want to kill him, he’s going to kill somebody,” she said, according to a recording of the call. “I know that he’s not in his right mind right now.”
A minute later, a Palisades human resource executive called 911 to express concern that Miller was headed for the lodge at Alpine, where his wife was working, because he was “paranoid toward her.” The executive reiterated that Miller had schizophrenia and wasn’t taking his medication.
“We’ve been working with Placer County with this guy for a while,” the executive said.
‘I was just thinking, get your gun out’
Unbeknownst to Placer sheriff’s officials, a CHP officer was already chasing Miller after spotting the stolen truck driving northbound on State Route 89. Meanwhile, Placer County deputies who had responded to the reports of carjacking and reckless driving continued on to Alpine, believing Miller was headed there.
The CHP officer, Guillemin, caught up to Miller at the turnoff for Alpine and turned on his lights and sirens. Miller kept driving. At 9:41 a.m., he swerved into oncoming traffic, nearly hitting two cars, Guillemin’s dash-cam video shows. Miller then cut across the double yellow lines again and made a left onto Olympic Valley Road toward Palisades, still driving on the wrong side of the road. At that point, Guillemin called off the pursuit.
State parks ranger Yarbrough, who was on his way to Tahoe City for a meeting with his supervisor, had been stopped at the light going southbound on 89 when he saw the stolen truck speed through the intersection, followed by the CHP car.
Yarbrough later told investigators that he hadn’t heard any calls on the radio that morning, explaining that it’s a bit of a dead zone between Truckee and the lake. He called his boss, who said Placer County deputies and CHP were looking for a carjacking suspect. Yarbrough decided to follow Guillemin to see if he needed help.
Just before the turnoff for Olympic Village Inn and the Palisades offices, Guillemin pulled over to talk to Yarbrough. The two were making a plan on how to find the stolen truck when it blew past them down Chamonix Place. Yarbrough, who was still in his vehicle, took off.
Palisades surveillance footage shows the state parks vehicle striking the stolen truck steps from the office building’s front door. Miller can be seen exiting the stolen truck with the knife in his right hand, walking directly to Yarbrough’s patrol car, and attempting to pry the driver’s-side door open with his left hand. Miller then turns toward the CHP officer and begins to move in his direction when Yarbrough fires a single shot, striking Miller in the back.
“I was just thinking, get your gun out. You got to — you got to get some rounds on him,” Yarbrough said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”
There were no witnesses to the shooting besides the two police officers. Miller was pronounced dead at 10:29 a.m.
Miller’s family claims in its lawsuit that law enforcement was negligent, based on the fact that neither Yarbrough nor Guillemin, appeared to be aware of his mental health history, according to police radio traffic and investigators’ interviews with the two officers. While Placer sheriff’s officials quickly identified Miller as the suspected carjacker and recognized that he was in the midst of a crisis, that information was not relayed to the other agencies. CHP also didn’t notify Placer that its officer had located Miller. By the time the sheriff’s office learned that CHP and state parks had found Miller, he was lying on the pavement, bleeding to death.
In December, nearly a year after Miller’s death, the Placer County district attorney’s office cleared Yarbrough of criminal wrongdoing. In its report, the DA argued that the officer had an “objectively reasonable” fear that Miller could severely injure or kill him.
Mohsini, the attorney for Miller’s family, called the DA’s report “garbage,” saying the officer’s self-defense argument was “weak.” She argued that Yarbrough, a 22-year law enforcement veteran and an instructor of use-of-force defensive tactics, should be held to a higher standard. According to the report, the officer had a Taser, pepper spray, and baton at the time of the shooting.
“He had many things he could reach for instead of using that firearm,” Mohsini said.
In its analysis of the shooting, the DA argued that Miller had the “apparent intent” to kill somebody that morning, noting that he had stolen a car at knifepoint, that the passenger he picked up “feared Miller was going to kidnap him or kill him,” and that Miller’s wife told dispatchers he was going to kill somebody.
Yarbrough said he also worried that Miller could go after an innocent bystander, though the confrontation occurred away from the main base area where guests park, dine, and ski. No members of the public were seen in the immediate area at the time of the shooting.
The DA’s analysis made no mention of Miller’s mental health history. To his family and friends, that’s the heart of this case.
“If they had been able to keep him in the hospital the night before, that morning would have never happened,” a former coworker said.
After the shooting, Palisades sent staff just one email about “this morning’s incident,” according to two employees. The message, which was reviewed by The Standard, didn’t mention that there had been a shooting or that an employee had been killed. “There was never any follow-up,” an employee said.
Another employee said he hadn’t heard about the shooting until a reporter asked him about it. That bothered him. “The resort didn’t tell me,” he said. “They didn’t make it a headline.”
Two weeks before Miller’s death, a 66-year-old man from Point Reyes died in an avalanche. In that case, Palisades shut down for the day.
“Somebody getting shot — it’s a bigger deal for me, because we have a lot of problems with police officers,” said the employee, who asked to be anonymous to protect his job. “If that was a white man from San Francisco, they would have closed the resort.”
Palisades spokesperson Patrick Lacey repeatedly declined to answer questions about previous police incidents involving Miller; what resources, if any, the resort provided to help with his mental health issues; if visa workers like Miller have health benefits; or how the company helps such workers adjust to life in Tahoe.
“I am mad at absolutely everybody involved in the situation,” Miller’s former coworker said. “I know there’s not much legally the company could do except maybe cancel his contract and send him home — which I do wish they would have done.
“It was a complete failure everywhere.”