Stockton Mom Defends Daughter With Baseball Bat From Robbers
STOCKTON (CBS13) — A Stockton woman locker her little girl in the closet before taking a baseball bat to the gunman ransacking her family's home, saving a family of seven.
When the robbers had a gun in her face, Amanda Merlos thought she might as well go down fighting. The brave mom gave the suspects a baseball bat beating while her brother-in-law did some fighting back of his own.
Fritz Hammer's nose is cut from being pistol-whipped. He says he was just sitting at the table when four gunmen busted into his Stockton home and grabbed his wife.
"Put us on our knees and, you know, put the gun to the back of my head and put the gun to my wife's head.," he said.
They were ripping the place apart. Amanda hid in her room upstairs and locked her 7-year-old daughter Gia in the closet.
"And said don't come out until I come get you, no matter what you hear," she said.
While Fritz and his wife were at gunpoint downstairs, two of the suspects went up and kicked in Amanda's door. She says they shoved a gun in her face, but she's one tough lady.
Amanda held a bat she keeps for protection and started swinging away at the suspects as her daughter was hidden just feet away.
"Well it was either my daughter or me or them," she said. "There was no way I was gonna let them have my daughter."
"I was gonna come out, but then I realized I couldn't, because then I thought I was gonna die, but I stayed in there quietly," Gia said.
In the commotion, the family says one of the robbers accidentally shot one of his friends. Downstairs, Fritz heard the shot.
"When I heard a pop I jumped up, like, I had to do something because it was going down," he said.
Fritz fought his way to the front door. The gunmen were suddenly running scared. He chased them out to their getaway car, punching a window as they sped off.
The injured suspect was dropped off at a hospital where he was later detained by police. Several others were detained as well.
Fritz says the men didn't wear masks, but he didn't recognize them and has no idea why they chose his house.
