(NC) Disabled man uses handgun to stop robbery 08-15-03

Bystander shoots suspect during robbery at ATM By OREN DORELL, Staff
Writer
Friday, August 15, 2003 12:00AM EDT

William “Don” Strickland takes his small-caliber handgun wherever he
goes, just in case any criminals cross his path.

On Thursday, the former iron worker on permanent disability used it –
when he saw a young woman being robbed at an ATM and the robber trying
to get away.

First Strickland shot the tires of the getaway car; then he shot the man
inside once in the right leg.

The robber escaped, but soon Clayton police arrested Morris Levi Stith
of Clayton after Stith checked into Johnston Memorial Hospital with a
gunshot wound to the right leg. Stith was charged with robbery and
assault with a deadly weapon, Clayton police said. Strickland probably
will not be charged.

Stith complained about being shot as he hobbled into the magistrate’s
office in downtown Clayton with a police escort Thursday afternoon.
“It’s wrong, man,” he said.

The incident occurred a few minutes before 9 a.m. in front of the Bank
of America branch at Clayton Corners Shopping Center in the western part
of town.

Rebecca Lynn Newton, 20, of Barber Mill Road in Clayton said she was
about to insert an envelope containing $400 from her paycheck into the
ATM slot when a man shoved her from behind and said, “I’ll take that.”
Newton spun and grabbed the unarmed man by the shirt, causing him to
fall, and she started screaming.

Strickland, 35, of Four Oaks was in his car waiting for the bank to
open. He said in an interview that he heard a woman scream — “Help,
help, help, he’s robbing me!” — and sprang into action. He said he
“don’t get around too good” because of an injury several years ago that
required four titanium rods to be inserted in his back. Still,
Strickland ran to a white Chevrolet Cavalier that was backed into a
parking spot.

The robber had jumped into the car, and Newton was struggling with him
by the car door. The car started moving, and Strickland hollered at the
robber to stop, his North American Arms .22-caliber Magnum revolver in
his hand. Then he fired twice at a rear tire.

“He still wouldn’t stop,” Strickland said. “I was standing beside the
car, and he tried to run me over. “I had my hand in the car” with the
gun in it, Strickland said, “and I asked him to stop again, and he
wouldn’t do it, so I shot him in the leg.”

When police arrived, Strickland told them he was sure he had shot the
man in the right leg, and police notified area hospitals to be on the
lookout for a patient with such a wound, said Lt. Bill Newsome of the
Clayton Police Department. Officers found $360 in cash on Stith, Newsome
said.

Newsome said Strickland is unlikely to be charged because he is listed
as the victim of the assault. Tom Lock, the Johnston County district
attorney, said a person has a right to use deadly force to resist deadly
force. “If the suspect in this case was attempting to run over a person,
then that person could use deadly force to resist the assault,” Lock
said.

He added that intervening in a robbery involves some risk. “No one wants
to encourage vigilante justice, but I certainly can understand that a
person might feel compelled to intervene when he saw a crime being
committed. I might do the same thing under similar circumstances.”

Strickland, who does not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, said
the gun had been lying on the dash of his car. “I don’t go to the
grocery store without something today, because of things like that,” he
said.

Newton, a gas station clerk who took the day off after the robbery, said
Strickland is her hero. Her fiance, David Little, 40, said he, too, was
grateful. “I’m going to call him over the weekend and ask him what kind
of steak he likes,” said Little, who moved to Clayton with his fiance e
this summer from Atlanta. “I’m going to have him and his wife and kids
over for dinner.”

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