Florida Man Saves Girlfriend By Waiving Off Violent Home Invader With Ax

A Florida man is being hailed as a hero after he saved his girlfriend’s life from a violent home intruder, reports said Wednesday.

Alex McMaster, who lives in his Pinellas Park home with his girlfriend Christina Robles, told ABC Action News he used an ax to keep the 17-year-old intruder from getting away after he busted through their front door and started choking and hitting his girlfriend.

Robles had found the teenager asking for directions to a park when she answered a knock on her door.

When Robles told him she wasn't aware where the place was, the teen allegedly tried to force his way into the home, NBC News affiliate WFLA reported.

According to reports, the teen allegedly grabbed Robles by her throat and slammed her head against a wall. McMaster, who was sleeping upstairs, was woken up by his girlfriend's screams.

"You knew what was happening by the way she was screaming and the way he came after me," McMaster told ABC Action News.

"I asked him what he was doing. He said he was trying to get money off her," McMaster said. "He said he would have hurt her."

McMaster said he first punched the intruder and then reached for the first thing he saw in front of him, which was the ax.

"It just so happened to be there. I had him by his throat and he was down. He looked away for a minute I went and grabbed it and then he really got scared because he was afraid I was gonna hit him," McMaster explained.

McMaster said he held the intruder with the ax for over five minutes until Pinellas Park Police officers arrived at their house.

"I just said follow my commands and you'll be fine and he did," McMaster told ABC Action News.

"His natural reaction, seeing his girlfriend in danger and obviously a threat of what was going on, and [he] acted," Sgt. Michael Lynch of the Pinellas Park Police Department told WFLA.

The police said the teen was a high school senior, who had left class and walked nearly 3 miles to the neighborhood and knocked on several doors until someone finally answered.

Police said the teenager, who is said to have behavioral issues, apparently left class to attempt the alleged home invasion.

He has been charged with home invasion robbery, felony battery by strangulation, and two counts of simple battery and he is being monitored by a senior at Richard L. Sanders High School.

McMaster told Fox News he was lucky that he found the ax at the right moment.

"And that's the thing. If I wasn't home who knows what would have happened?" McMaster said.

He also mentioned that he could now only hope that the thief learnt his lesson by knocking at the wrong door, "Hopefully he got the message, probably not but hopefully he did," ABC Action News reported.

In a similar incident in July, a Chicago man saved a woman's life from an invader in his Wicker Park apartment. While the intruder was punching, choking and trying to rip the clothes off the woman, Mac Dolan, 25, reached for the sword hanging on his wall, and which he had bought earlier as a souvenir from Medieval Times in Schaumburg, Illinois.

The attacker ran as he saw Dolan grab his sword, the Chicago Sun Times reported then.