Country star on being shot, nearly killed in mugging: ‘Gave me some mental problems’

It has been nearly 35 years since country music star Tracy Lawrence was shot and nearly killed during a mugging in Nashville, and not all of the wounds have healed.

The 57-year-old revealed just how much he still struggles due to that incident during a recent interview on the Big D and Bubba radio show.

“It was the night after I finished doing background vocals on (debut album) Sticks and Stones, so nobody knew who I was,” Lawrence said according to Parade Magazine. “It was a completely random thing. I was just pulling into a parking lot, and then (a) guy stuck a pistol in my face. It was wrong place, wrong time.”

Lawrence revealed that he still has part of a bullet lodged in his hip.

“It’s caused me a lot of problems, especially as I got older,” Lawrence said. “The one that really gave me the most trouble, I got shot through the joint of my left knee, and so I had it scoped three times and I finally wound up having to have a total replacement in 2016. But it’s caused me a lot of other joint problems over the years. I still struggle with it now.”

But the issues haven’t only been physical.

“I never really got help until much later on in life, and it caused me a lot of problems in my relationships,” Lawrence said. “It gave me a real bad attitude about some things for a while because I felt like I survived something that I didn’t know if I should have. It gave me some mental problems.

“Anything you go through something traumatic like that, my best advice to anybody is to get help,” he added. “Talk to somebody because the longer you push that stuff down, the more difficult it is.

“It’s gonna come to the surface eventually.”