Pastor John-Paul Miller arrested months after suicide of wife Mica Miller
Pastor John-Paul Miller of Solid Rock at Market Common in South Carolina is expected to appear in a Myrtle Beach court Thursday for a bond hearing after he was arrested and charged a day earlier with third-degree assault months after the suicide of his wife, Mica Miller.
The pastor’s assault charge stems from a confrontation with a protestor outside his church, News13 reported.
Myrtle Beach Police did not provide many details on Miller’s arrest but said they responded to a “report of a disturbance” at the 700 block of Hemlock Avenue at 2:38 p.m. on Wednesday.
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“That situation is under control, but you will continue to see a police presence in the area,” they said in a statement on Facebook.
Footage captured by News13 shows police and demonstrators in the parking lot of Horry-Georgetown Technical College’s Market Common campus at 743 Hemlock Ave. The news outlet also reviewed a video showing a confrontation between Miller and a woman.
“What did you say,” he reportedly said to the woman. “You walked right up to me.”
Miller reportedly made a motion in the video that angered the woman, and she claims he put his hands on her.
Miller’s arrest comes less than a week after the FBI conducted "court-authorized law enforcement activity" at a home connected to him, an FBI spokesperson told ABC15. Multiple boxes of evidence, including what appeared to be computer equipment, were seized, News13 said.
Court records previously reported by The Christian Post show that Mica filed for divorce from her husband in October 2023, but the reasons were not stated.
The case was eventually dismissed in February, but a few days later Miller filed for “Separate Support and Maintenance” seeking financial support. Mica Miller would file for similar support in April. A hearing was scheduled for June 5. On April 27, two days after she served Miller with divorce papers, Mica Miller was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her head in Lumber River State Park in Orrum, North Carolina.
Miller told CP that shortly after he and Mica got married in 2017, she was diagnosed with “bipolar II, schizophrenic and dependent personality disorder.”
Since then, he says, they have been trying to manage her mental illness with lithium, and significant support. As long as she took her medication, Miller said his wife would be fine. Mica, however, had a roller coaster relationship with the medication.
He alleged she would complain about how the medication would make her gain weight or cause her to slur. And earlier this year, the wife of a well-meaning pastor friend who had no understanding of mental illness offered to pray and believe that Mica Miller’s mental illness would go away. That incident, he said, stuck with Mica, and she started to believe that she no longer needed the medication.
Miller did not reveal that he, too, had mental health struggles and had also been medicated.
A dated video posted on Facebook by Ty Longerbeam on May 10 shows Miller experiencing what some claim appears to be drug-induced psychosis. He explains in the video to an unidentified person that his medication was changed, and he felt like ants were crawling all over him even though no ants were visible crawling over him.
In the video, Miller is lying on a lawn next to a truck with an open door mumbling almost incoherently. Neighbors offer him water and try to comfort him while gently trying to figure out the best way to help him.
When asked if he wanted his mother to come help, he said, “I don’t want my mom” because she is always trying to get him on medication and “this is what it does.”
In a sworn affidavit shared on X by Protestia and filed as part of her application to serve as special administrator for her sister's estate, Sierra Francis said Mica Miller had served her husband with divorce papers on April 25 and was looking forward to being free of him.
"My sister was hopeful for her future after filing for divorce from John-Paul," Francis wrote in the affidavit.
"My sister also expressed to me that she was fearful that she would not make it to the divorce and that her life would be taken from her. It is my belief, based on conversations with my sister, that she told multiple people, including other family members," she explained.
"Mica stated to me on many occasions, 'if I end up with a bullet in my head, it was not by me, it was JP.' Mica forwarded a family group text message notifying us that Mr. Miller was served the divorce papers on April 25, 2024," Francis added. "On April 27, 2024, my sister, Mica A. Miller, was found dead as a result of a gunshot wound in Lumberton, North Carolina."
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