.svg)
Amber Carter believed she had found a man who was funny, charming and easy to talk to when she met Jeremy Harris in 2013. Years later, after ending their relationship, the Dallas mother says she was confronted with a devastating discovery: the former partner she once loved had become connected to the killing of her father and, she later learned, the deaths of three other strangers.
Carter, who works in healthcare marketing and lives in Dallas, Texas, said she and Harris formed an immediate connection when they first met. Their relationship lasted six years, and the couple welcomed their first child together in 2015.
But Carter said the relationship gradually changed. She described Harris as becoming increasingly violent as the years passed and said he struggled with mental health and addiction issues. She eventually ended the relationship in 2018.
After the separation, Carter moved in with her father, whom she described as one of the most important people in her life, while caring for her four children.
Carter said she had grown up especially close to her father.
“He was the best dad ever,” she said. “I grew up an only child, so I was his world, and he was my best friend.”
She said she had always been particularly close to him and described herself as a “daddy’s girl”.
That close relationship made the events of 18 November 2020 all the more devastating.
After finishing a night shift, Carter returned home intending to prepare her children for school. But when she arrived at the property, she found police vehicles blocking the road and officers gathered outside her father’s home.
At first, she said, she had no idea why police were there.
Carter recalled repeatedly trying to contact her father after arriving outside the house, but receiving no response. His car was still parked in the driveway, increasing her fears that something had gone wrong.
When she told officers that she lived at the property, she was informed that a body had been discovered inside but had not yet been formally identified.
Police then asked Carter who would normally have been in the house.
She said her father should have been the only person inside.
As the seriousness of the situation began to sink in, Carter said officers asked whether she could think of anyone who might have wanted to harm either her father or herself.
Her thoughts turned to Harris.
Carter said she had always believed that her former partner could eventually find himself in serious trouble, but she never imagined the situation could lead to something so extreme.
Daily Dazzling Dawn understands that the revelation transformed Carter’s understanding of the relationship she had once shared with him.
Carter said she was horrified and heartbroken by the possibility that someone she had loved could be connected to such an act.
Her shock deepened when she later learned that three other strangers had also been shot dead in a series of killings in the weeks before her father’s death.
The discovery left her confronting the reality that the man she had once known as a partner and father to their child was capable of violence on a far greater scale than she had ever imagined.
Carter said she had known Harris had personal struggles and had expected that his behaviour might eventually lead to serious consequences for him.
However, she said she had imagined something very different, such as him becoming involved in a fight or suffering harm through his own reckless behaviour.
She never expected innocent people to lose their lives.
Carter said she now takes some comfort in knowing that Harris is in custody and unable to harm other people or approach her and her children.
She said the experience had left her grateful that her children were protected, while also forcing her family to rebuild after the loss of her father.
For Carter, the case represents an unimaginable collision between two parts of her life: the father she considered her best friend and the former partner with whom she had built a family.
The events of November 2020 changed that life permanently.
As she continues to reflect on what happened, Carter says she remains haunted by the gap between the person she believed she knew and the actions she later learned he was capable of.
