Columbia Mall shooting victim jailed on unrelated federal charge
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
The man shot outside the Columbia Mall on Aug. 11 is now in the Cole County Jail on unrelated federal charges.
Lawrence C. Lawhorn faces several federal charges related to insurance fraud. The U.S. Attorney's Office charged Lawhorn with six counts of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud for allegedly working with a woman to make false medical claims following a car crash.
The FBI claims the situation started in August 2019, when someone backed into the woman's car in Boone Hospital Center's parking garage. The driver's insurance firm, State Farm, paid more than $3,000 to fix the car's damage.
Lawhorn, according to the FBI, advised the woman to go to area hospitals and ask for expensive tests be run because of the crash, and ask the procedures be billed to the other person's car insurance. The charges claim the woman's injuries either didn't exist or the tests were "unnecessary." In total, the FBI said State Farm sent the woman more than $12,000 for the medical procedures, including an MRI scan.
Lawhorn was recently hospitalized after a shooting outside the Columbia Mall. Police are still seeking the two alleged shooters in that case.
Prosecutors asked Magistrate Judge Willie Epps to deny Lawhorn bond, tying him to two unsolved murder cases in Columbia. Assistant prosecutor Aaron Maness said a witness in a 2018 robbery case Lawhorn was charged in was killed one week before his deposition, leading to Lawhorn's charges getting dropped. Maness also said court surveillance video in December 2018 shows Lawhorn arguing with someone outside the courthouse. That person was killed nine days later.
The circumstances align with the killings of Charles Hayes, Jr. in October and Chase Hayes in December of that year.
"Law enforcement has developed information that the defendant was involved in the shooting of Individual 1," Maness wrote about the Chase Hayes case. "The Government cannot proceed with the information because law enforcement were told it would entail harm or death to individuals by the defendant."
Lawhorn has never faced charges for either shooting, nor have Columbia police said publicly that he is connected to either case.
Lawhorn's appointed attorney, T.J. Kirsch, did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon. A hearing on Lawhorn's bond is set for 2 p.m. Aug. 25.
