A father shot a man who was allegedly peeping into his little girl's bedroom window in northwest Harris County, Texas on Sunday night.
Harris County sheriff's deputies said that a couple confronted an intoxicated man inappropriately touching himself outside their daughter's window around 10pm on Sunday, reported ABC7.
“She looks over at the window and this guy is at her window. I can’t say that he tried to take my daughter’s innocence away -- he took my daughter’s innocence away,” the girl’s mother, who did not want to be identified, told KPRC 2.
Her 10-year-old daughter screamed when she saw the man. Her parents, who were armed with licensed handguns, went outside and tried to detain the man, according to deputies. “I’m literally saying you’re not going anywhere,” the mother said as she described how the man was trying to get away.
According to the father, both he and the mother told the man to lie down in the yard and wait for police to arrive. Instead, the man walked across the street to a Valero gas station. The couple followed the man to the gas station.
According to deputies, the wife held the man outside the gas station while the husband went inside and asked the staff to call 911. Then the man grabbed the handgun from the wife's hands and pointed it at her. “He is wrestling with me, with my gun, and I’m like, ‘I’m not going to let you get my gun, you are not going to kill me or shoot me,’” she said.
“My husband just said he heard a ‘ca, ca,’ but by that time the guy had already grabbed me, got my gun and pulled it on myself," she recalled.
The man was going to start shooting out of fear, but the father shot him three times, deputies said. But the father said that he believed he shot the man four times; twice in the chest, once in the stomach and once in the side.
“We didn’t want this guy to get shot. We were waiting for police to detain him because I’m pretty sure if he did this to my children, he’s doing it to a lot of other children out here. We are praying for the suspect and we are also praying for his family," she said.
The man was taken to the hospital in critical but stable condition, said the sheriff's office. According to deputies, the incident will be taken to the Harris County District Attorney's Office for a grand jury review. The father said that his child had told them earlier about spotting someone watching her through the window, but the parents didn't believe her at that time.
