Cops apparently prevent workplace shooting

Harris County sheriff's deputies thwarted what was apparently intended to be a workplace shooting yesterday morning thanks to the reports of a couple of co-workers who say they got death threats by telephone. It all started when Barbara Griffith, asecretary at the Verti-Garden tree company, got a call on her way to work Thursday morning: "This morning, I’m on my way to work. It's 7:47. The phone rings. I didn't recognize the number. I pick it up and it's Mike telling me that I need to run and hide. And I can't repeat what else he said," Griffith told KPRC. The caller was Michael Landefeld, a 31-year-old man who has been fired from Verti-Garden on Wednesday (and who also reportedly called Griffith's boss, Jim Hart, with a similar message). Griffith and Hart decided it wasn't safe to go to the office, so they met at a Shell station on Mason Road and flagged down a passing deputy. "I ran to him, telling him, 'Listen, someone's trying to come up here and find my employer and I, and he's threatened to kill us,'" Griffith said.

As luck would have it, Landefeld pulled into the station right then; as soon as he saw Deputy L. Stover and another deputy Stover had called for backup, Landefeld took off and headed east on Highway 290. The cops eventually caught up with him near Mueschke Road and found a shotgun and shells inside his vehicle. Channel 2 asked Landefeld the obvious question: "Were you going to hurt those people today?" Landefeld said he didn't intend to, so KPRC's Phil Archer asked him what he was doing — and Landefeld said he was simply headed in to get his personal effects. You know, with a gun. Landefeld's co-workers told Channel 2 that the threats were totally out of character for Landefeld, but a family member said he had been diagnosed with a mental illness years ago that was never treated.

An attempted aggravated assault charge is pending against Landefeld, who also had three outstanding traffic warrants when he was arrested.