Police in High Point, North Carolina, took a 44-year-old man into custody outside a church on Sunday after a 911 caller reported an armed individual sitting in the parking lot, and officers discovered a truck loaded with flamethrowers, crossbows, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, body armor, and a notebook listing addresses of churches, schools, and public buildings.
William S. Milliken III now faces three charges, including possession of a weapon of mass destruction, and is being held at Guilford County Jail on $250,000 bond.
The arrest unfolded at Wesley Memorial Church while services were underway. A caller told dispatchers that a man in camouflage was armed with a gun in the church parking lot. An off-duty officer already present at the church spotted Milliken, and additional officers arrived within minutes to take him into custody without incident, Fox News Digital reported.
What they found in his truck turned a disturbing call into something far worse.
High Point police searched Milliken’s vehicle after the arrest and recovered two flamethrowers, two crossbows, more than 500 rounds of ammunition, three knives, rolls of black duct tape, oxycodone pills, and a carbon dioxide-powered launcher designed to resemble a handgun.
Court documents, as reported by local outlet WFMY, revealed additional items that paint an even more alarming picture: a notebook containing addresses of churches, schools, and public buildings, along with GPS coordinates, body armor, radios equipped with police scanners, handcuff keys, and an enlarged map of North Carolina.
That combination, the reconnaissance material, the body armor, the scanner radios, the handcuff keys, goes well beyond a man who happened to have weapons in his vehicle. It suggests preparation. The charges reflect that assessment.
Milliken faces possession of a weapon of mass destruction, impersonating a law enforcement officer, and possession of a Schedule II controlled substance. Police have not publicly detailed what specifically supports the impersonation charge, whether Milliken was wearing a uniform, displaying insignia, or carrying credentials. That question remains unanswered in the public record so far.
His bond was set at $250,000. He remains in Guilford County Jail. No plea has been reported.
High Point Police Chief Curtis Cheeks III praised the response in a public statement.
“Thanks to the quick action of our officers, a man armed with weapons was taken into custody before anyone was hurt.”
Cheeks added that officers “prevented a potentially dangerous situation from escalating and helped ensure everyone attending church services could return home safely.”
The timeline matters here. A 911 call came in. An off-duty officer on scene identified the suspect almost immediately. Backup arrived within minutes. Milliken was in custody before anything escalated.
That sequence, alert citizen, officer already present, rapid backup, is exactly how these situations are supposed to work. It is also exactly how they rarely do. In too many cases across the country, investigations after the fact have revealed that attackers planned for years before carrying out violence, and warning signs went unheeded.
Here, the warning sign was a man in camouflage sitting armed in a church parking lot on a Sunday morning. Someone saw it. Someone called. Officers acted.
No one was hurt. That outcome is not guaranteed in situations like this, as communities across America have learned. Armed confrontations with suspects have put officers at serious risk in recent months, including incidents where police officers were shot during standoffs with armed individuals.
Police have not disclosed a motive. The notebook with addresses of churches, schools, and public buildings, combined with GPS coordinates and a detailed map of the state, raises obvious questions about what Milliken intended. But authorities have not publicly connected him to a specific threat or target beyond what was found in the truck.
It is also unclear whether Milliken was known to law enforcement before Sunday. The 911 caller described him as armed with a gun, but the weapons recovered were flamethrowers, crossbows, knives, and the CO2 launcher designed to look like a handgun. Whether a conventional firearm was also present has not been clarified.
The specific North Carolina statute under which flamethrowers qualify as a “weapon of mass destruction” has not been identified in public reporting. North Carolina law defines the term broadly, but the legal specifics will matter as the case moves forward.
The quantity of oxycodone pills, enough to support a Schedule II possession charge, has not been disclosed publicly either. Law enforcement agencies investigating dangerous armed suspects often release additional details as cases develop, and more information may emerge as Milliken’s prosecution proceeds.
Wesley Memorial Church joins a long and grim list of houses of worship where violence was either carried out or, as appears to be the case here, potentially averted. Churches are soft targets by nature. They are open, welcoming, lightly secured, and full of people focused on something other than their own physical safety.
That vulnerability makes the presence of an armed man in camouflage, carrying body armor, police scanners, and a notebook full of addresses, particularly chilling. It also makes the rapid police response particularly consequential.
In other recent cases, the consequences of armed threats have been severe. In Bakersfield, California, the FBI ended a 16-hour hostage standoff by killing an armed suspect who had taken multiple people captive. In Antioch, an officer was allegedly dragged into a getaway car by an armed robbery suspect. These incidents underscore what can happen when armed individuals encounter law enforcement or civilian targets.
High Point avoided that outcome on Sunday. The question now is what William S. Milliken III was planning, and whether the justice system will treat the answer with the seriousness the evidence demands.
Chief Cheeks was right to credit his officers. But the first hero in this story was the person who picked up the phone and dialed 911. Without that call, the off-duty officer at the church might not have been alerted. Without the alert, backup might not have arrived in time.
The system worked because people did their jobs, the caller, the off-duty officer, the responding patrol units. That is not a given. It is a choice, repeated at every link in the chain.
A man sat in a church parking lot on a Sunday morning with flamethrowers, crossbows, body armor, and a list of targets. He is now behind bars. The congregants of Wesley Memorial Church went home safely. That is the outcome Americans expect from law enforcement, and the outcome that communities deserve every single time.
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