Surveillance video captures the daring moment an 8-year-old girl thwarted an armed robbery at a Minnesota liquor store by hitting a would-be robber with a baseball bat.
The incident at the Big Discount Liquor Store in Maplewood, Minnesota, caught the attention of local and national news outlets.
The store manager, who identified himself to local news channels as Leo, said he was preparing to close the store at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 10, when someone he thought was a customer came in.
The store’s surveillance video showed a man wearing an Amazon delivery driver’s uniform entering the liquor store and walking around it before making his way to the cash register.
He walked up to Leo, pulled out a BB gun that looked like a real firearm, and placed it on the counter.
“He put the gun on the table. He asked me to give him all the money and everything I had in the register. I told him, ‘Yes, I’ll give you everything,'” Leo told WCCO.
Leo said he asked the man to put his gun away because his eight-year-old daughter was behind the counter and he was concerned for her safety.
As the man went behind the counter, Leo punched him in the face and threw him to the ground, as seen on surveillance camera footage.
“I’m a father. I won’t let that happen,” Leo said.
And Leo’s daughter didn’t want to let her father fight the armed robber alone.
Suddenly, the little girl appears with a baseball bat in her hand and starts hitting the suspect while her father tries to hold him on the ground.
“She said she wanted to defend me,” Leo recalled. “When I saw the video that day, I just wanted to cry. I didn’t expect her to do something like that. I expected a little girl crying and screaming.”
The robbery suspect, 37-year-old Conchobar Morrell, was charged with first-degree aggravated robbery.
According to charging documents obtained by CBS News, Morrell was previously convicted of the same charge in 2004.
An Amazon spokesperson also confirmed that Morrell worked as a delivery driver for a third-party company that delivers packages for Amazon.
“He will be released immediately,” the spokesman said of Morrell.
