Attempted Murder for Free Health Care...
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/gwinnett/0705/28shot.html
Gwinnett postal worker details attack
By Mark Davis / Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Earl Lazenby is a tough guy, no question. Anyone who stops eight bullets and lives to talk about it is made of stern stuff.
Still, in quiet moments, the Centerville letter carrier thinks about that morning beside William Crutchfield's mailbox when he saw the barrel, heard the gun, felt the bullets.
"He [Crutchfield] said, 'Good morning,' and took the mail," Lazenby, 52, recalled Wednesday. "He took the mail with one hand, then started shooting with the other. I saw the barrel, but it was too late."
Wednesday morning, physicians removed an eighth bullet from Lazenby's body, the final reminder of the June 29 assault that put him in the hospital for two weeks.
Crutchfield, 60, is in federal custody, which apparently is what he wanted all along. On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in Atlanta indicted him on three charges stemming from the shooting, which took place in an older Gwinnett subdivision not far from Shiloh High School.
Investigators say Crutchfield decided to shoot Lazenby because Crutchfield, facing money and health woes, wanted to go to a federal prison and get his medical care for free.
In the waning hours of a late June morning, say prosecutors, he picked up a .380-caliber handgun, walked to the end of his driveway and waited for the approach of an easy target: Lazenby, his mailman.
Lazenby was right on time, a smile on his face, a bundle of mail in his hand.
That day started like any other. Lazenby left his house, a two-story frame structure with a fine, shady porch, and got to work at the U.S. Postal Service's Centerville office not long after 7. By 8:30 a.m., he was in his boxy little truck making the trek along a looping circuit of suburban roads that took in about 700 stops.
One was an older ranch home on Tanglewood Road, a tan, faded one-story house nearly hidden by untended, 8-foot ornamental rose bushes. It belonged to Crutchfield, with whom Lazenby periodically exchanged good mornings in his daily delivery of bills, catalogs and one-time-only offers.
Sitting in his truck, Lazenby saw Crutchfield waiting at the end of the steep, short driveway that led to his house. Lazenby rolled forward, grabbed Crutchfield's mail and prepared to hand it to him.
"I heard the pop-pop-pop and then started feeling the bullets," said Lazenby. "I guess instinct took over at that point."
Knowing he was shot, Lazenby yanked the steering wheel to the left, floored the little truck and drove about 60 yards up Tanglewood. He stopped outside the home of a Gwinnett deputy. "I banged on the windows and doors, but no one was home," Lazenby recalled.
Another neighbor came running over, alarm on his face. "I told him I'd been shot, and to please call 911."
By then, Lazenby noted, Crutchfield's battered old Chevrolet Cavalier was gone — driven, Lazenby later learned, to the Snellville Police Department, where Crutchfield confessed to the shooting.
On July 13, Lazenby went home and began the slow process of getting better. He would like to return to his route, to the people with whom he once exchanged waves and quick pleasantries. And that worries him.
"I wonder if I'll be able to handle it emotionally," said Lazenby. "I'll wonder what I would do if I came to someone's mailbox and they were waiting there with a gun."