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Saturday, March 13, 2010

7-Year-Old Calls 911, Saves Family From Attackers

OFF THE WIRE
Tori Richards Contributor
AOL News
NORWALK, Calif. (March 10) -- A quick-witted 7-old-boy thwarted an armed home invasion robbery when he locked himself in a bathroom with his little sister and called 911.
The boy, identified only as Carlos, detailed his harrowing ordeal to news reporters this afternoon and hugged the dispatcher who was on the other end of the phone line as he begged for help from police.

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"They were next to the door with my mom and dad, and my mom [and dad] were putting their hands up and their heads down," Carlos said of the two men who burst into his home with guns Tuesday morning.
Then the gunmen broke down the door to the bathroom where the children were hiding and grabbed the phone from Carlos. Screams can be heard on a 911 tape as the suspects asked the boy who he had been calling. "911," Carlos calmly answered. The men fled before deputies arrived.
Dispatcher Monique Patino, who has a young son herself, fought back tears as she recalled trying to keep Carlos calm before the line went dead.
"I didn't know what happened to them, all I heard was them screaming last and the voices fading," Patino said during the news conference. "I was horrified, I was nervous, I got very shaky. I had to take a walk to shake it off a little bit, but for those last few minutes not knowing -- it was horrible."
According to authorities, two men entered Carlos' home in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk after his 6-year-old sister had retrieved her lunch pail from the family car, leaving the front door open.
The men held handguns and a third stood outside as a lookout. As they ordered Carlos' family to the ground, the boy grabbed his sister and fled to a bathroom with a telephone, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Steve Kenny told AOL News.
The 911 tape records a terrified Carlos describing the event to Patino as his sister sobs in the background.
"There's some guys, they're going to kill my mom and my dad, can you come please? Can you come really fast, please, please?" Carlos begged. "They come, they ring the door and they have guns. They shoot my mom and dad. Can you come really fast. Bring the cops ... a lot of them ... and bring soldiers, too."
Kenny said no shots were fired and no one was injured. The suspects, who may have entered the wrong home by mistake, fled in a two-door gray Acura.
The sheriff's department gave Carlos a black baseball cap and a T-shirt with the department logo, a star, which he wore at the news conference.
"In my opinion, Carlos definitely could've saved his family's life," sheriff's Capt. Pat Maxwell said during the news conference. "We don't know what those suspects were going to do. We don't know the motivation for them to rob this house. There's nothing apparent at this point. They might have had the wrong house -- it happens many times.
"Now we have them [in a] house asking for something that's not there. How are they going to respond to that once they don't get it?" Maxwell said.