Amanda Michelle Marie Day, a 25-year-old white female from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had been born in Tulare, California, and spent much of her childhood in Shelbyville, Tennessee, where she graduated from high school, joined the color guard, and grew close to a large extended family that remembered her as loving, helpful, and deeply rooted in her Christian faith.
Friends and relatives later described how she loved babysitting, gardening, singing, and dancing, and how she was always ready to lend a hand to anyone in need. In the years before her death she moved to Tulsa, working hard and taking on responsibility as a manager at a Sonic Drive-In while staying closely connected to her parents, siblings, and the home community in Tennessee that would ultimately receive her back for burial.
On the night of August 11, 2014, Amanda was living in a small east Tulsa house with her fiancé, Robert Campbell, a modest place near the intersection of 21st Street and 145th East Avenue that they were turning into a shared home. While she was at work that evening, 49-year-old Harold Martin Brewer, who knew Campbell and whose sister Janet Myers was also staying at the house, came over to spend time there. According to later accounts, Brewer hung out with Campbell and Myers, smoking and talking, and asked if he could stay the night. Campbell did not object but warned that Amanda might not be happy about the arrangement.
Amanda came home from her shift at around 2:40 a.m. on August 12. In the quiet of the early morning, she and Campbell retreated to their bedroom, where she asked how long Brewer had been there. Before long, Brewer knocked on the bedroom door and asked her if she had any marijuana; she told him she did not and that he needed to leave her alone. The exchange escalated into an argument, with Brewer insisting he “can't take no for an answer,” and Amanda telling him that he needed to leave or she would hit him. As he left the house, Brewer reportedly told her, “you'll be sorry,” a parting threat that would take on a terrible weight just minutes later.
Brewer soon returned to the house carrying a shotgun. He came back inside, moving through the living area as Campbell stepped out of the bedroom and saw him armed. Realizing the danger, Campbell ran back into the bedroom to grab his own hunting rifle, while Amanda stood at the end of the bed closest to the door. In that fraught moment, before Campbell could intervene, Brewer raised the shotgun and fired, striking her in the chest. She fell back onto the bed and died almost immediately from the wound. The blast woke Myers, who heard Campbell scream; when she came out of her own room, she saw Brewer leaving. She grabbed the shotgun and demanded to know what he had done, but he pushed her aside and fled into the dark. Investigators later determined that he discarded the shotgun in the yard of an abandoned nearby house as he left the area.
Police and emergency crews were called to the house at about 3:15 a.m. Officers found Amanda lying in the bedroom with a gunshot wound to the chest, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. The killing was recorded as Tulsa's 28th homicide of 2014, and detectives quickly identified Brewer as the primary suspect. Authorities released his name and description to the public, and within roughly six hours an officer spotted him walking near a car wash on 21st Street, about a mile from the crime scene. He was taken into custody without incident; a police affidavit later noted apparent bloodstains on the leg of his jeans, and investigators recovered a shotgun consistent with the murder weapon from a nearby yard.
Prosecutors charged Harold Martin Brewer with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting, alleging that he had left the house after the argument only to return armed and deliberately fire on Amanda in the bedroom. A Tulsa County jury later convicted him of first-degree murder for her killing, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Brewer appealed, arguing among other things that his due-process rights had been violated during the trial, but in November 2017 the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction and life sentence, leaving him incarcerated for the crime. No other suspects were identified; the case was resolved in the courts with Brewer held solely responsible for her death.
In the aftermath, Amanda's body was brought back to Tennessee. Funeral services were held at Doak-Howell Funeral Home in Shelbyville, followed by burial at Rosebank Cemetery in the Flat Creek community, where her grave marker bears an inscription remembering her as a beloved daughter and sister “forever in our hearts.” Obituaries and online memorials paint a picture of a young woman whose life had been filled with family gatherings, work, and small everyday joys, and the National Gun Violence Memorial page created in her name shows dozens of candles lit by friends, relatives, and strangers moved by her story, many of them recalling her as outgoing, bubbly, and always smiling.
