A stranger broke into a home and fatally stabbed a 9-year-old girl and her 8-year-old brother with a pitchfork before he was shot to death by sheriff's deputies.
Three other siblings, including one who was bleeding from puncture wounds, escaped by climbing through windows and running through fields to a neighbor’s house, where one called 911.
“There’s somebody in my house who I don’t know,” 14-year-old Jessica Lynn Carpenter told the dispatcher. “[He’s] stabbing my brother and sister with a pitchfork. You have to careful—he’s going to kill them.”
When deputies arrived at the house in this rural community about 60 miles north of Fresno, the stranger charged at them with the pitchfork, authorities said.
“He was pointing it at them and going right after them. He wouldn’t stop,” Assistant Sheriff Henry Strength said. “They were hollering at him to stop, but he wouldn’t stop. Finally they had to shoot him.”
Ashley Danielle Carpenter, 9, and John William Carpenter, 8, were killed in their beds at their home on Vassar Avenue on the outskirts of the city.
The children’s parents were not at home at the time, the Merced Sun-Star reported.
The girl who phoned 911 told authorities she had just woken up and when she left her bedroom she noticed that the man appeared to be getting dressed. He had closed all the windows and pushed the furniture pushed up against the walls.
Jessica ran back to her room, locked the door and tried to call for help from her phone, but the line was dead, she told relatives. She escaped out of her window and ran barefoot through the fields until she found a neighbor who was at home.
