MCALESTER, Okla. - In a fight for her life a mother jumped into action when she woke up to an armed stranger standing over her Tuesday morning; she walked away with minor injuries, he left in an ambulance.
Even though she has cuts and bruises, and scratches covering both hands, Mary Lynn Pannel is alive.
“He busted my door open, that’s all I know," she said.
Something she wasn't sure she'd be able to say Tuesday morning.
“I was asleep and I woke up to a gun in my face.”
McAlester Police said 20-year-old Kaleb Oss was in Pannell's bedroom at the Westridge Village Apartments holding an air gun.
“Then I looked down the hall and he kept screaming at me about a safe.”
She doesn't have a safe, but she said he didn't care.
“He saw my purse and then he told me that the key to the safe was in my purse.”
Her purse is now broken after her struggle to get it back.
“Her son tried to fight him with the pistol," said Captain Don Hass with the McAlester Police Department.
Bobby Pannell tried protecting her.
“He was getting crazier so I went and got a meat cleaver and I hit him. I didn’t know what else to do," Mary said.
She couldn't leave the fight up to her son.
“He was going to kill us because he still had the gun at that point in time.”
She slashed him several times, his blood still on it.
“I think he’s probably learned his lesson," Captain Hass said.
He also said Oss is a known criminal for robberies and using drugs.
2 Works for You was there when he limped his way into jail.
Reporter Ashley Holt asked Mary Lynn what she thinks she'll feel when she wakes up tomorrow.
"That’s if I go to sleep tonight," she replied.
She's not worried about him, just her son recovering from wrist surgery and how she'll ever find peace again.
“I’m going to forgive him and let God deal with him.”
McAlester Police said it's requesting the district attorney file charges for first-degree burglary, attempted armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
It'll present its report to the DA Wednesday, and expects Oss to eventually spend his life in prison.
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