MAN CHARGED IN SHOOTING OF HIS MOTHER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 25, 1993                   TAG: 9301250088
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
MAN CHARGED IN SHOOTING OF HIS MOTHER
A 23-year-old man has been charged in the Sunday morning shooting of his mother in southeast Roanoke County.
Police said Michael Thomas Crockett, whose address was not known, went early Sunday morning to his mother's house in the 3400 block of Mount Pleasant Boulevard.
An argument ensued inside the rural home and Mary Settles, 41, was shot in the head at close range about 6:30 a.m., according to county police Sgt. R.F. Robinson.
A bullet grazed Settles' head but did not penetrate her skull, he said. "It ricocheted off the side of her head. She was very lucky." Settles was treated at Roanoke Memorial Hospital Sunday morning and released.
Robinson said Settles had called 911 for help shortly before she was shot. He said she had been wounded by the time police got inside the house.
Crockett was arrested there and charged with malicious wounding. He was being held without bond Sunday at the Roanoke County jail. A preliminary hearing was expected to be held today.
Settles said in a Sunday night telephone interview that she feared trouble when she heard a knock on her door about 6:20 a.m. Her pajama-clad husband of six months, Bill Settles, 64, was drinking coffee in their living room. She was still in her nightgown and planning to go to church. She quietly dialed 911.
Her son, raised by foster parents, asked Bill Settles if he could come in from the cold to talk with his mother. She'd last seen him before Christmas when he'd just been released from prison and was living at a Roanoke mission, she said. Before that, she hadn't seen him for about seven years.
Sunday, Crockett demanded money and her husband's guns, according to Mary Settles. She said he also had a gun of his own. "He came in here wild and crazy. He said, `You don't think I'll kill you all?' "
She said he threatened to find his father, Henry Crockett, and shoot him, too. She said he'd never hurt her before.
Her son stood in a living room chair and pointed a .22-caliber handgun at her, Settles said. "He shot me in the back of the head," she recalled, weeping.
Then, as she lay bleeding, Crockett held her in his arms. "He said, `I can't believe I shot my own mama.' "
Settles said bullet fragments remain in her head. Doctors told her she was lucky. Her husband, who has heart trouble, was treated Sunday at the Veterans Administration Medical Center and released, she said.
She fears what will happen when her son is freed again. "I hope he never gets out," she said.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB