Northwest Indiana Bureau

3 Charged With Attacking, Robbing Deliverywoman

LAKE STATION, Ind. (CBS) ― A pizza delivery driver suffered severe head and hand injuries Saturday when she was attacked by three people while making a delivery.

Lake Station residents Keith Hawkins, 18; his mother, Tammy, 38; and her boyfriend, 30-year-old Joseph Zeld, were arrested in connection with the attack. They will face charges of battery with serious injury and robbery.

CBS 2 Northwest Indiana Bureau Chief Pamela Jones reports the victim was released from the hospital, and wants to return to work at the pizza parlor, although not as a delivery driver.

She says the doctors tell her if she'd been hit in the head just once more, she would have died.

J&J's Pizza Shack employee Samantha Wilson-Sayre, 21, was delivering pizzas around 10:30 p.m. to a house in the 4300 block of Cosner Street in Lake Station. When she arrived, the house had a for-sale sign and looked abandoned, but two people told her to come around back for payment.

"I set the pizzas down and I was coming up, as I was telling them the total and I just got struck to the head," she said. "The first time, they fractured my skull and I put my hand up and then I guess they broke the main bone in my hand; I've got four pins in it."

Stitches cover a metal plate inserted into her head and a cast encases her broken hand.

"I been thinking like wow. I'm 21 years old," Wilson-Sayre said. "I just turned 21and almost died over pizza."

Lake Station Police Chief Mike Stills said Wilson-Sayre was hit in head by a bar-like object, later identified as The Club, a device used for locking steering wheels. She blocked the second blow with her hands and escaped by car.

Her attackers took the pizzas, worth about $100.

Keith Hawkins confessed to the attack and said his mother and Zeld were involved in the plot. Hawkins said his mom's intent was to get the pizza and, if possible, the delivery car.

Police say Tammy Hawkins told her boyfriend, Zeld, to call the restaurant and give a phony name and the address to the vacant house.

Zeld and Hawkins' son Keith Hawkins waited for the driver at the vacant house.

"To order a pizza and hit somebody over the head and nearly kill them, that's unbelievable," said Chief Michael Stills of the Lake Station Police Department.

Pizza delivery drivers hit the streets a little more concerned for their safety Wednesday.

"I was just dumfounded that something like that could happen," said delivery driver Brian Holden.

The three suspects are in the Lake County Jail facing robbery charges, although friends of the victim hope those charges will include attempted murder.

A relative of the 18-year-old believes his mother drugged him and forced him to commit the crime because she needed to steal a car to leave town.

CBS 2 Northwest Indiana Bureau Chief Pamela Jones and The Indiana Post-Tribune contributed to this report.

(CBS 2 and the Post-Tribune are news partners covering stories in the communities of northwest Indiana. Send story tips to tips@cbs2chicago.com. (© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

---