Kentucky Girl Called A Hero For Keeping Family Safe During Burglary

A 10-year-old Kentucky girl is being praised as a hero for keeping her family safe during a home invasion on Monday.

Laken Blanford was at her family's Nelson County home with her grandma and 6-year-old brother when she saw a stranger walking around.

"He was just walking normally, like nothing was going on, like he owned the house, like he had every right to be there," Laken told WLKY.

Laken hid in a closet with her grandma and brother and called her dad Lance Blanford, who was at work. She asked her dad on Facetime if someone was supposed to stop by the house to do work.

Her dad was unsure what was going on, so Laken bravely left the closet to go down the stairs to show her dad the unknown man.

"She turned her camera so that I could see him. I didn’t recognize him. Oddly, he was helping himself to a Busch Lite in my refrigerator," Lance wrote on Facebook.

He was going to tell his daughter to get out of the house when the phone cut out.

"As a parent, it's an indescribable feeling of helplessness, fear, and all that when you get disconnected and you know there's an intruder in your house," he told the TV station.

He immediately rushed home to make sure his family was OK. He grabbed his shot gun and started looking through the house before he came face-to-face with a stranger. When the man lunged at him, Lance hit the stranger in the head with his gun and knocked him unconscious.

Lance couldn't find his family in the house because Laken found a way to escape to a neighbor's home and call 911.

Laken was still shaken by the incident, but the Nelson County Sheriff's deputies who arrived reassured her that she did the right thing. They also gave her a sheriff's challenge coin for her bravery.

"I was very impressed with her age, her actions, and I thought it was very well deserving she got one of these," Nelson County Sheriff Ramon Pineiroa told the station.

Deputies arrested the man, who was later identified as Stanley Ritter. Ritter was charged with burglary.