Officers find man evading arrest in closet above shelf after nearly two hours waiting

Brandon Mills, 42, of Mountain Home, Arkansas, is scheduled to appear at the Ozark County Courthouse at 8 a.m. April 15, for a criminal setting in a case in which he’s charged with the class E felony of resisting arrest for a felony. He was originally arrested in the case on March 19 and held in jail until March 21, when Associate Judge Raymond Gross released him on his own recognizance.  

According to the probable cause statement, prepared by Ozark County Lt. Matt Rhoades, at 5:15 p.m., the officer was conducting uniform patrol in Pontiac in an attempt to arrest Mills for an active felony warrant. 

“As I approached his residence… I saw him outside of his vehicle. He saw my patrol vehicle and started walking towards the front door. I lost sight of him behind a second vehicle and by the time I got to the front door of the residence Deputy Ryan knocked and announced several times and secured it. I ran to the backyard to ensure he didn’t run into the woods behind the house,” Rhoades wrote in the report. 

The officers said that when he ran to the back of the house, he spoke with an individual through an open window. And that person said Mills was in his living room. 

“I told him that he needed to have the suspect come to the front door where an additional deputy was waiting. The suspect did not come to the door,” Rhoades wrote. 

“We knocked and announced on the house multiple times, but he did not answer the door. We made entry into the house through a back door that was ajar and encountered a locked door into the living room from a smaller room. We made entry into the secondary door and through our search we did not find anybody in the living room or the first two bedrooms. We entered a hallway, at which time I was confronted by another male who stated that a portion of the residence was his own separate apartment. I saw the suspect’s wife standing behind the gentleman with her newborn baby, which was purportedly the suspect’s child.”

Rhoades said the man told the officers that they were not allowed inside his part of the apartment, and that Mills rented out the first half of the house where they had first entered. The man said Mills did not use the second part of the home.

Rhoades wrote that the officers left the residence and established a perimeter. They used that time to write a request for a second search warrant for the rest of the home. 

“While I was finishing a search warrant for the second half of the house, deputies were conducting a secondary search of the primary residence and located the suspect hiding in a closet above a shelf. We were at the residence making announcements that the suspect had a warrant and for him to come out to us multiple times for approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes while we waited for additional [officers] to be called in on their days off to secure the residence and search. The suspect was aware he had a warrant and intentionally hid from us to avoid being arrested on his warrant.”

In another case, Mills is currently charged in Ozark County for failing to appear at his scheduled court hearing at 9 a.m. March 11, before Associate Judge Raymond Gross at the Ozark County Courthouse for a case in which he’s charged with driving with a revoked/suspended license, a class E felony. 

The documents says that the judge had allowed Mills to be released from jail on his own recognizance in a case on Feb. 7. He had a court hearing scheduled for Feb. 25, and that hearing was continued to March 11. The day before that hearing, Mills reportedly requested to appear via Webex for the hearing, but the request was denied by the court. He was charged with the class E felony of failure to appear in court for a felony case in connection with the absence. 

Mills is ordered to also appear at 9 a.m. April 15 for an arraignment on the failure to appear charge.