Cindy McLemore still feels excruciating pain in her right arm, more than a year after she was attacked by an armed intruder in her West Columbia home.

Her assailant is serving a 325-year prison sentence. But McLemore says she and her husband are still struggling to pay the mounting medical bills from the attack, which was witnessed by three of their six children.

McLemore, 27, says the State Office of Victim Assistance — a branch of the governor’s office — has refused to pay for any medical bills other than a $450 ambulance charge.

A stay-at-home mother, McLemore said she and her husband, a self-employed home renovator, have no health insurance and can’t afford to pay her medical bills, which she estimated total about $7,000 so far.

She says she needs surgery on her right shoulder to alleviate nerve damage that causes her to often lose feeling in her right hand, which she said routinely swells and turns blue.

McLemore can’t understand why the state agency, which is supposed to help indigent crime victims like her, has turned her away.

“It’s excuse after excuse, yet I didn’t ask for these people to come into my home,” she said this week.

Tav Swarat, a former Lexington County prosecutor who handled McLemore’s case, also is frustrated by the situation.

“The McLemores are the type of people that victim’s assistance was set up for,” said Swarat, who now works in the state attorney general’s office. “They were absolutely true victims of crime in their own home.”

Contacted Thursday, agency spokeswoman Kristen Bagwell said her office in April and this month has paid a total of $2,400 in bills McLemore submitted.

“The other one just went through today,” she noted, though she said she couldn’t discuss specifics under federal privacy laws.

Bagwell said although McLemore has been “deemed eligible” by her office, it cannot process her other claims until she submits them. Under state law, the office pays up to $15,000 in medical bills that are not covered by insurance; in certain cases, it can cover up to $25,000 in bills, she said.

“What we find with a lot of victims is that they have the (medical ) bills, and we do not,” Bagwell said. “We love to help these people who need help, but we have to have these guidelines.”

But McLemore and her husband, Tim McLemore, said the office repeatedly has refused to pay their submitted bills, even though they have pointed out they no longer are covered by Medicaid.

“The last time Cindy called, the lady just said, ‘Just be glad you’re alive,’” Tim McLemore said.

Cindy McLemore thought she would never live through the ordeal of Dec. 23, 2002.

She said she had just pulled a birthday cake for her nephew out of the oven about 2 p.m. and went outside to tell the 3-year-old and three of her children — now 4, 6 and 8 years old — to come inside. That’s when a masked man, armed with a handgun, jumped over her fence and ordered them inside. A second gunmen met them in the kitchen, she said.

McLemore said although she pleaded with the intruders not to harm the children, they threatened to kill her and them.

The 5-foot-2 McLemore said one of the assailants, John W. Hayward, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 225 pounds, grabbed her by the hair — pulling out a large chunk — and then began hitting and kicking her because she wouldn’t stay still for him to tie her hands.

McLemore said the intruders ransacked her home before stealing her van and many of the family’s Christmas presents.

Hayward was sentenced last December to 325 years in prison after pleading guilty to the attack and a string of violent crimes in Richland and Lexington counties. The other intruder, Kimjaro Presley, received a 50-year sentence in January after pleading guilty to various crimes.

Since the attack, McLemore said, she has burned her hand unknowingly when it has lost feeling and can’t pick up her children or do housework. She said she also suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

“He’s in jail, but I’m in pain every day,” she said.

Reach Brundrett at (803) 771-8484 or rbrundrett@thestate.com.