TOUGH KID

11-Year-Old Boy Uses Machete to Fend Off Home Intruder

After being forced into a closet by a pellet-gun wielding intruder, the boy grabbed a machete and struck the man with it, leaving him with a serious head wound.

An 11-year-old North Carolina boy thwarted a home invasion by striking an intruder over the head with a machete, police say. The boy, who has not been identified but was described by police as a “star baseball player,” was reportedly home alone when a man and a woman showed up at his home in Mebane on Friday. While the woman knocked on the front door, a man broke in through a window in another area of the house and used a pellet gun to force the boy into a closet. But the child instead left the closet and grabbed a machete, which he used to hack the male intruder, leaving him with a severe head wound. “This is a very tough kid who kept his wits about him,” Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood told local news station WTVD. Police have issued an arrest warrant for the accused intruder, identified as 19-year-old Jataveon Dashawn Hall, but say he slipped out of an area hospital on Saturday and eluded officers.