Three years and seven months before fleeing from police into a densely wooded area off Powhatan’s Cartersville Road, prompting the local Sheriff’s Office to issue a county-wide Shelter in Place order, Powhatan resident Chazz Lee Gordon had promised to live a good life.
In a 2020 letter written to Judge David Johnson, Gordon, who had been facing over four decades in prison for six felonies connected to a 2019 road rage shooting in Chesterfield, thanked Johnson for treating him as a human being and not a criminal.
“I remember the meaning of the quote you keep on your desk…that we should look at one another as human beings instead of as judges and judged, but honestly that was the first time I wasn’t seen as a ‘threat’ or a ‘menace,’” wrote Gordon, then 33, who had been in trouble with the law as a young man but had not had any issues for the previous several years. “I’ve worked so hard to leave my past behind me and to be seen as more than what my exterior shows.”
People are also reading…
Gordon went on to give the judge his word that he would live a righteous life.
Johnson it seems, had reason to believe him. Presented along with Gordon’s own letter were over 40 other submissions from family members, friends, church leaders and even a former corrections officer, all of them pleading with the judge to weigh all the good Gordon had done with his life in recent years against what they described as one unfortunate mistake.
The letters described a young man who was respectful, kind and empathetic, devoted to both his mother and his young children. He had tried college but decided it wasn’t for him, noted one close family friend, so he earned his commercial driver’s license and began working as a truck driver.
More than anything, they said, he was trying to be a mentor to young people and help them avoid the mistakes he had made.
The charges Gordon was facing in 2019 stemmed from a shooting that had left truck driver Nathaniel Crutcher wounded in the leg. Gordon, who had been driving his gold Hyundai Sonata on Chippenham Parkway with two female passengers at the time, was accused of firing into the cab of the tractor trailer Crutcher was driving after an earlier incident in which Gordon had attempted unsuccessfully to merge in front of Crutcher.
In court, Gordon vehemently denied that he had fired at Crutcher.
While Johnson said he didn’t believe that, he did believe Gordon deserved a second chance. After sentencing him to the mandatory three-years on a gun charge related to the incident, he suspended the remaining time.
Gordon went on to serve the three years, and was released from prison on April 23, 2023.
What kind of turn his life took next remains unclear.
According to Powhatan Chief Deputy Jeff Searfoss, deputies had recently been looking for Gordon in connection with an assault that occurred at the Sheetz gas station at the intersection of Routes 60 and 522 in June. When officers spotted him and attempted to stop his vehicle on the afternoon of July 11, Gordon took off. A brief pursuit ended in the 4900 block of Cartersville Rd., where Gordon stopped his car in the middle of the road and ran into the woods, reportedly carrying a firearm.
On July 17, a body closely matching Gordon’s description was pulled from a creek not far from where he was last seen. While the medical examiner has not yet released a cause of death or official identification of the person found, those who knew Gordon soon began posting tributes to him on social media.
“It’s just a really tragic situation,” said Searfoss, who could not speculate as to the likely cause of death but did confirm that the depth and steep banks of Deep Creek, where the body was found, make it far more dangerous than those unfamiliar with the area might realize.
The discovery of the body came after a days-long search failed to locate Gordon in the 2,300-acre area where he was last seen.