Family, friends remember shooting victims

One of the final photographs taken of 15-year-old Alyssa Burkett shows a girl with a broad smile standing next to a bed given to her by her grandfather as a Christmas gift.

Hours after the photo was taken, Burkett was shot and killed along with her mother, 35-year-old Jaimi Hurlbert, in a driveway west of Kalispell.

The suspect, Tyler Michael Miller, is now in Flathead County Jail.

“They just didn’t deserve it,” said Jaimi’s sister Jennifer Hurlbert. “They were completely innocent, especially (Alyssa).”

Burkett, a sophomore at Flathead High School, is described as a girl who enjoyed spending time with her many friends, riding horses, longboarding, hunting and being with her family.

In her own words — still displayed on her MySpace profile — she wrote that she could be shy, but was most of the time very outgoing and always in search of new friends.

Above all, she was kind.

“The first thing I think about when I think of Alyssa was just that she had a gentle soul,” Jennifer Hurlbert said.

Burkett had in recent years become closer to her mother, who gave up custody of Burkett and her 16-year-old brother Damien Hurlbert in 2009.

Burkett and Damien Hulbert were living with Belinda Erickson, their former babysitter, after Jaimi Hurlbert was arrested and convicted on a drug charge.

Damien Hurlbert said Monday that he learned of his mother and sister’s deaths through a phone call on Christmas Day. He had spoken with his sister on Dec. 19, he said.

“She said she was doing good then,” Damien Hurlbert said.

Burkett had left Erickson’s home to live with her grandfather Butch Hurlbert, and later decided she wanted to live with her mother. Damien Hurlbert decided to stay with Erickson.

Though Butch Hurlbert admits his daughter had struggled with drug use, he said she was emerging from that lifestyle with a renewed desire to straighten out her life.

He said Burkett thought her own presence in her mother’s life would help her stay away from drugs. In large part, it did, Butch Hurlbert said.

“She had had problems with drugs, but she was off it,” he said.

Jaimi Hurlbert had for several years worked at the Scoreboard Pub and Casino, where customers and coworkers alike remember her for her unfailing smile and ability to have fun in any circumstance.

“She’s one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet,” said Brandi McAtee, who also works at the Scoreboard. “On her worst day she was better than anyone else on their best.”

McAtee said Jaimi Hulbert would often come to the pub with friends when she was not working, but that began to change 17 months ago when her youngest daughter was born.

“She slowed down,” McAtee said. “She wanted to do it right this time.”

Jennifer Hulbert said she always enjoyed shopping with her sister, excursions that provided them opportunities to talk. She said her sister would sooner ask about someone else’s problems than discuss her own.

“She did not have an easy life, but she was always, always, always there when other people were having problems, even if they were minuscule compared to hers,” she said.

Jennifer Hurlbert said another quality she admired in her older sister was her insistence on being present for family gatherings such as birthdays and holidays.

It was that trait, along with a fear of her ex-boyfriend, that brought her to her father’s home the night before her murder. She left Saturday afternoon to pick up her infant daughter at Miller’s mother’s home, and never returned.

“She loved her baby,” Jennifer Hurlbert said. “She took pride in her. She was always dressed very nice, just always cleaned and loved and fed.”

Bruce Hurlbert said he moved to Libby from Las Vegas with Jaimi and her sister Jennifer when Jaimi was 18 years old. In 1998, he moved to California for work and his daughters moved to Kalispell.

He developed a strong relationship with Burkett when he moved back to Flathead County. The two hunted together on trips that saw Burkett shoot her first two deer. They went hunting together for the last time this fall.

He said he won’t forget how much she loved to ride his horses.

“She was on them all the time,” he said. “She asked if I would give her one for Christmas. They were there for her any time she wanted them.”