John-Paul Miller arrested for assault months after his wife’s suicide

By Leonardo BlairSenior reporter Thursday November 7, 2024

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 hearing after being arrested a day earlier and charged with third-degree assault, months after his wife’s suicide. Mica Molenaar.

The pastor’s assault charge stems from a confrontation with a protester outside his church, News13 reported.

Myrtle Beach police have not provided many details about Miller’s arrest, but said they responded to a “report of a disturbance” on the 700 block of Hemlock Avenue on Wednesday at 2:38 p.m.

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“That situation is under control, but you will continue to see police presence in the area,” they said in a statement on Facebook.

Footage captured by News13 shows police and protesters in the parking lot of Horry-Georgetown Technical College’s Market Common campus at 743 Hemlock Ave. The news outlet also viewed video of a confrontation between Miller and a woman.

“What did you say,” he reportedly said to the woman. “You walked straight to me.”

Miller reportedly made a move in the video that angered the woman, and she claims he laid his hands on her.

Miller’s arrest comes less than a week after the FBI conducted “court-authorized law enforcement activities” at a home associated with him, an FBI spokesperson told ABC15. Several boxes of evidence, including what appeared to be computer equipment, were seized, News13 reported.

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 ultimately dismissed in February, but a few days later Miller filed for “Separate Support and Maintenance” to obtain financial relief. Mica Miller was expected to apply for similar aid in April. A hearing was scheduled for June 5. On April 27, two days after serving Miller with divorce papers, Mica Miller was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at Lumber River State Park in Orrum, North Carolina.

Miller told CP that shortly after he and Mica 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. However, Mica had a rollercoaster relationship with the medication.

He claimed she would complain about how the medication would make her gain weight or cause her to swear. And earlier this year, the wife of a well-meaning pastor friend who didn’t understand 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 came to believe she no longer needed the medication.

Miller did not reveal that he too had mental health issues and had also been prescribed medication.

A dated video posted to Facebook by Ty Longerbeam on May 10 shows Miller experiencing what some believe appears to be a drug-induced psychosis. He explains in the video to an unidentified person that his medication had changed, and he felt like ants were crawling on him, even though no ants were visible crawling on him.

In the video, Miller lies on a lawn next to a truck with an open door and mumbles almost incoherently. Neighbors offer him water and try to comfort him, while they carefully try to figure out how best to help him.

When asked if he wanted his mother to come help, he said, “I don’t want my mother,” because she always tries to give him medicine and “this is what it does.”

In one affidavit Sierra Francis, shared on .

“My sister had hope for her future after filing for divorce from John-Paul,” Francis wrote in the affidavit.

“My sister also told me that she was afraid that she would not make it through the divorce and that her life would be taken from her. I believe, based on conversations with my sister, that she told several people, including other family members,” she explained.

“Mica often said to me: ‘If I get a bullet in the head, it’s not me, it’s JP’s fault.’ Mica sent a text message from the family group informing us that Mr. Miller had received divorce papers on April 25, 2024,” Francis added “On April 27, 2024, my sister, Mica A. Miller, was found dead as a result from a gunshot wound in Lumberton, North Carolina.”