Man who shot disabled taxidermist in leg sentenced to 13 years in prison
Plainfield Township resident victim of 2019 home invasion
A 34-year-old North Carolina man who admitted shooting a disabled Slate Belt taxidermist in the leg during a home invasion will spend up to 13 years in state prison.
Kevin Campbell, of Greenville, North Carolina, was in Northampton County Court on Wednesday morning before Judge Jennifer Sletvold, having pleaded guilty Feb. 19 to robbery, aggravated assault, conspiracy and illegal possession of a firearm, all first-degree felonies.
Campbell was sentenced to 6 ½ to 13 years for the robbery, aggravated assault and illegal firearm charges and another five to 13 years for the conspiracy charge. These sentences will run concurrently and Campbell will receive credit for time served.
On Aug. 7, 2019, Campbell and another man knocked on the door of a Plainfield Township home along rural Delabole Road. Richard Fischer, who was 66 at the time, had just finished dinner with his girlfriend and opened the door to find two men he did not recognize. Fischer said one of his two Jack Russell terriers bit one of the men, which he took as a sign about the wrongness of the encounter.
One of the men told Fischer that he was the brother of someone who knew Campbell through his taxidermy work. He let the men inside and shortly after, one of them pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.
“When I turned back, the [man] was pointing a gun at me,” Fischer
said during an interview shortly after the crime. “This had never happened to me before in my life.”
The gunman, later identified as Campbell, motioned for Fischer to go down the hall to his bedroom while the second man went to the kitchen to keep Fischer’s girlfriend there.
In the bedroom Campbell twice shot Fischer in the leg. The first bullet grazed his calf, but the second punctured his thigh.
“Guess he didn’t want me arguing with him,” Fischer said.
The New Jersey native said he believed it was a small miracle
that he did not die from the bullet, which he said could have easily struck his femoral artery. He was already an amputee, having lost his left leg after a 1988 car crash in Alabama.
“Then he asked me where I keep the money. I said, ‘Don’t shoot me again, I’m bleeding.’ He said, ‘I know that, where’s the money?’ I pointed to the safe on my bedroom dresser and said, ‘Take what you want.’ “
Campbell made off with a safe containing about $1,600, a birth certificate and other personal documents. Fischer said he
waited for several seconds after the men left before calling out for his girlfriend and trying to crawl to her. She had escaped down the road to call for help.
Two days later, Campbell was picked up in North Carolina. Police say the second man was Hezekiah Moore, who is in Northampton County Jail on charges related to the home invasion.