A concerned homeowner in Texas took up arms and fended off a machete-wielding man who attempted to enter his home.
Darryl Stevens' home surveillance camera captured the moment a machete-wielding intruder approached the family's Liberty Hill home just north of Austin.
"At that moment, I obviously freaked out. I have two young children here in the house and just went into complete fight or flight mode," Stevens told FOX 7.
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Stevens' gut reaction was to lock up his home and grab his 9mm handgun.
"I started running through the house. I locked every door as fast as possible, ran upstairs. Luckily, I had a firearm here, so I grabbed my 9mm, unlocked it, ran down as fast as possible," Stevens said.
The suspect, later identified as 43-year-old Jerry Escamilla, managed to climb a fence and get to the upper deck of the family's home.
He was greeted by Stevens' handgun when he arrived.
"Told him he's got to leave, or he's going to lose his life, you know?" he said. "Luckily, after I did that, he dropped the machete."
The video showed Escamilla retracing his steps and climbing back down as a gun is seen pointing at the intruder.
Stevens' wife called 911 and local police arrested Escamilla. The 43-year-old was charged with criminal trespassing and failure to identify and is being held on a $10,000 bond.
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Stevens explained to the local outlet that they had recently moved farther away from Austin to "feel safe."
"I just had to protect my family, and that's what I did. Luckily, I didn't have to discharge my firearm," Stevens said. "It's just not something you expect to happen in Liberty Hill in the country or way out in the country in the very back of this new, nice neighborhood... we moved out here, we moved further out of the city to feel safe."
Stevens said that he plans on upping the security at their home, saying that they will turn their home into "Fort Knox."
"We feel violated, as a family, we feel like our sense of safety in our safe place, which is our house, has been taken from us. I almost get a little emotional even saying that. It's not fair," he said. "We're definitely upping security. We're getting a few more firearms to have one upstairs, one downstairs. We are going to be installing more fences and more security features. Floodlights. I'm going to turn this place into Fort Knox at this point in time."
Texas's Stand Your Ground law established the right for gun owners to apply lethal force to defend themselves against threats, regardless of whether it was possible to retreat first. The law notes that the shooter cannot instigate the altercation.
