A young girl is being praised for her bravery after footage emerged of her beating an armed robber with a baseball bat as he attempted to the liquor store her father was managing.
The girl, who is just 8, can be seen repeatedly hitting the suspect with an aluminum bat.
The incident occurred at the Big Discount Liquors in Maplewood, Minnesota, where her father worked at the counter.
“I’m so proud of her, she’s so strong,” her father Leo told CBS News.
However, the father said he was unaware his daughter was trying to save him until he saw the surveillance footage, the Daily Mail reported.
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“When I saw the video, I didn’t expect she’d do that. I expect[ed] a little girl crying, screaming,” he said.
As he was preparing to close the store around 9:30 p.m. On Saturday, Leo said the suspect, 37-year-old Conchobhar Morrell, walked into the store and began wandering around.
He approached the counter with a bottle of liquor, placing a gun next to it and demanding that Leo hand over all of the money in the cash register.
“He [Morrell] put the gun on the table, he asked me to give him all the money an everything in the register,” Leo recounted.
“I told him, ‘Yes – I’ll give you everything.”
Leo said that he attempted to reason with Morrell, but no avail.
“’I tried to talk to him and say, ‘I got my daughter here. Can you put the gun down, move it away from her? I will give you everything, take everything,” he recalled. “It’s money, I don’t care, I just care about the safety for her.”
Morrel then grabbed the gun and walked behind the counter.
Leo tried to fight him off, punching him and then wrestling him to the floor.
“I’m a dad, I’m not going to let that happen,” he said.
Seconds later, his daughter could be seen holding a baseball bat before hitting several times before running away.
Police later apprehended Morrell while he was walking a few hundred feet north of the store.
He was charged with first-degree attempted aggravated robbery and is being held at Ramsey County Jail instead of a $40,000 bail before his court hearing on Friday.
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