Alleged Long Beach Intruders Arrested Before for Extortion: Police

The pair were arrested for extorting money but released due to insufficient evidence

The man and woman involved in a robbery in which an 80-year-old homeowner shot and killed the woman had been arrested earlier this year in an extortion case involving an elderly victim, Long Beach police said.

Tom Greer, the homeowner, shot and killed Andrea Miller, 28, while she and her alleged accomplice were trying to break into Greer's gun safe at his Long Beach home on July 22, police said.

Gus Polly Adams, 26, was arrested and faces murder, robbery and burglary charges. Prosecutors are pressing for murder charges because someone died during a felony, officials said.

Adams' mother, Ruby, was also arrested and charged with robbery for allegedly being a lookout in the crime, prosecutors said. She also faces a special allegation that she inflicted elder abuse in the commission of a crime, according to a Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office press release.

Greer said in an interview with NBC4 that he had no regrets when he fatally shot Miller twice in the back as she tried to flee, despite her claims that she was pregnant. Coroner's officials determined that she was not pregnant.

Miller and Adams were arrested May 14 and held in connection with extorting several hundred dollars from an unidentified elderly man, said Nancy Pratt, a Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman.

"Who knows how many people they scammed between my dad and now," the victim's son, Steve Lecuyer, told the Los Angeles Daily News. He did not identify his father to protect his privacy.

Lecuyer told the Daily News that Miller and Adams conned his father out of money at least twice. At one point, Miller told the man she and Adams needed $22,000 to bury her mother. They never got the money and they were caught after a neighbor called police alerting them to the scam.

The extortion case is ongoing, Pratt said.

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