Two young children in Brooklyn got the fright of their lives when an intruder got into their apartment and tied them up, taping their mouths shut and binding their feet.
But while the intruder was stealing items from their Bushwick neighborhood home, one of the children secretly called their father for help.
That call may have saved the siblings’ lives.
The father of the two children, William Rodriguez, told ABC7 what thoughts were running through his head when he first got the terrifying call from his daughter.
“As soon as my daughter called me and told me there was a man in my house and tied her up, I just went crazy, nuts,” Rodriguez said.
All the father could do was try to get back home as quickly as he possible.
While Rodriguez was racing home, his 10-year-old daughter Angelina and her brother, 7-year-old Angel were both held up in their apartment as the intruder was ransacking their bedroom. The children’s mother, Ada had temporarily left their apartment to go to the laundry room in their building, ABC7 reported.
When Ada left, a stranger entered the building hallway and rang their apartment’s doorbell. Angelina, thinking it was her mom opened the door.
ABC7 asked the children if they were scared. “Yeah,” replied Angelina.
“When I opened the door it was a stranger and he just pushed me and my brother,” Angelina told ABC7.
“He said bad words to us. He said, ‘Sit down,’ and he said, ‘Shut up,’” said Angel.
The siblings explain how the intruder used a roll of tape and two knives from the kitchen to tie them up.
“He taped them up by the feet like that and my daughter as well. And then he taped their mouth,” Rodriguez said.
But the intruder seemed to miss one thing—tying their hands. As the man continued to ransack their bedroom, that was the moment Angelina showed quick-thinking skills and grabbed the phone.
“I called my father and I put it on speaker so he could go and think that my dad was coming,” said Angelina. “I was just thinking in my head because if I don’t call my father, maybe something even more bad is going to happen. So I just called.”
When the intruder heard Rodriguez’s voice through the speaker, he suddenly fled the apartment.
“I got here in less than three minutes, thinking that I was going to find this man downstairs but he got away,” Rodriguez told ABC7.
The children think the intruder was only there for around 5 minutes and would have likely been caught on security cameras in the building.
The father praised his two siblings over the handling of the incident.
“She [Angelina] had a lot of courage to do that, you know. I applaud her,” he said.
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