The 82-Year-Old Detroit Man Who Only Needed Something We All Have in Our Tool Boxes to Protect Himself

Faced with the horror of home invasion and violence against his family, an 82-year-old Detroit man over the weekend was forced to defend his home with a hammer.

Police say George Bradford was woken up by the screams of his daughter and granddaughter. They were reacting to a man who had broken in through a basement window.

"I could hear him walking up the stairs. ... I had my choice to get ready," Bradford told WJBK-TV.

He rushed to the kitchen and grabbed the closest thing to a weapon: A hammer.

Bradford gave the intruder a chance to leave peacefully, demanding he go quietly.

The intruder refused, so the 82-year-old man “let him have it.”

"He didn't fall. ... He wobbled a little bit. ... He asked me not to kill him," Bradford said, adding that he hit the intruder once.

Detroit police soon arrived and found what they said was a man in his 30s sitting in Bradford’s living room, blood dripping form his head.

Medics treated the man for his wound before police arrested him for home invasion and took him into custody.

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