'He's going to kill me here. This is it': Mother fights off home intruder armed with knife

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — A Lake County mother of three said she woke up to find a man with a knife in her bedroom, then fought back as the man tried to stab her.

“The first thing I thought: He’s going to kill me here. This is it,” the woman told Eyewitness News under condition her identity not be revealed.

The Mascotte Police Department said a man cut a hole in a screen to get into the woman’s home through an unlocked door late Saturday night.

The woman told Eyewitness News she was watching TV in her bedroom, with her husband sleeping next to her, when she noticed the bedroom door inch open and then shut. The woman said the door then swung open and a stranger barged in, swinging a knife at her chest.

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The woman said she thought of her three girls sleeping upstairs – so she fought back.

The struggle woke her husband, who chased the intruder out of the room, the woman said. The intruder fell down the stairs and another relative helped stop him until police arrived, according to the woman. The suspect was later identified as Samuel Hernandez, 32.

Police said when Hernandez was caught, he claimed he was ordered to what he was accused of doing by people who smuggled him here blindfolded from Mexico.

Mascotte police that ICE is looking into the smuggling allegation.

Cox Media Group