12-year-old Paris Hall couldn’t believe her eyes Monday morning when she woke to find an intruder in her bedroom.
“I heard the light flick on and I felt the glare from the light shining down on me,” Hall said. When she rolled over she saw a compete stranger trying to unplug her television. She immediately questioned the man.
“I’ don’t know you. What are you doing?'” she asked the man.
“He said, ‘my uncle told me to come get my phone,'” as he picked up her old phone that was on top of the dresser.
“I said ‘ok well, I don’t know you, you need to leave,'” Hall responded to the man.
Hall said the man walked out the back door. That’s when she noticed the kitchen window was broken and knew something was very wrong. She waited for a minute before calling her grandfather for help.
“I’m telling her, ‘go to the neighbor’s house, go to the neighbor’s house’!” her grandfather Samuel Lamb told WFLA he jumped in the car and rushed home. “My drive felt like an hour. I was just thinking on the ride I have to come home and I don’t know what’s going happen.”
When Hall tried to run to the neighbor’s house, the man was waiting outside for her.
“He said, ‘what time do your parents get home?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he asked me, ‘do you want to come outside and chill with me?'” Hall said she ran back in the home and grabbed a kitchen knife. “I was pointing it at him and told him I don’t want to come outside and chill with him and that he needed to leave.”
Lamb is thankful his granddaughter remained calm and handled the situation the way she did. “She didn’t panic and go screaming and hollering, that probably could’ve caused other things to happen, but she did a great job.” He knows it could have been much worse.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had come home and seeing her hurt or missing I don’t know,” he said in tears.
Lake Wales Police released a sketch of the suspect. If you have information on the identity of the suspect please contact Detective Metz at (863) 678-4223 extension 265 or Heartland Crime Stoppers at (800) 226-8477.
