Thursday, January 17, 2008

He's outta there!


Good thing for the perp the kid wasn't on steroids.


Teen nails burglar with bat inside Mesa home

A 14-year-old boy came face to face with a burglar ransacking his Mesa home on Tuesday and used a baseball bat to level the playing field. Michael Six hid in his bedroom closet and called 911 after seeing a man using a screwdriver to break into a sliding-glass door. The Kino Junior High ninth-grader talked in a low voice as he described the burglar's whereabouts.

Then, Michael, clutching an aluminum baseball bat, heard his locked bedroom door rattle as the man used the screwdriver to bust in. "You need to get out of the window," the 911 operator told Michael.


"I can't," he answered with a hint of anxiety in his voice. "I didn't know what to do," Michael said Wednesday. "I didn't think I could pop (the window) open. My adrenaline was running. I was scared."


The man was still clutching the screwdriver as he rummaged through the boy's backpack. Then, Michael, a 5-foot-10-inch, 150-pound former baseball player, stepped out and swung. The burglar cursed as Michael nailed him on the lower back and on the left shoulder.


"Sorry, man!" Michael yelled amid the chaos. Michael said the man, described as "big," then "turned around and took (the bat) from me." The burglar ran out the back as Michael, uninjured, busted through a window and met police.


Police arrested Thomas Gonzales Garza, 30, of Chandler.