Gary Gross, his girlfriend, and their 14-month-old son were asleep in their Kenoak Lane home in Columbia Township, OH when the unthinkable happened – criminals targeted their quiet home.

Early Saturday morning, at approximately 3:15 a.m., the young father awoke to the sound of intruders entering his home. 24-year-old Gross said he grabbed a hammer to defend himself with and confronted the two home intruders he’d never seen before.

“The only thing going through my mind is if they do something to me there’s nobody … to protect my wife and my son,” Gross said. “You have to do what you got to do. You have to make sure that these guys do not make it to that back room. Your son is back there. If anything happens to you, he’s defenseless, she’s defenseless.”

Gross said after a brief struggle with the men, he ran outside to grab a gun from his car and ran back into the house where he shot both men. The suspects then fled the scene in their vehicle.

“They picked the wrong day to do something like that,” Gary Gross told WKRC. “I don’t want to kill anybody, so hopefully they’ll be okay and they’ll learn a lesson.”

The suspects were tracked down by authorities in Cincinnati and were transported to University Hospital to be treated for their gunshot wounds before being taken into custody.

While Gross says he never wants to shoot anyone ever again, if he has to defend his family, he’d do it again.

“This is a nice street. I want my son to be able to come out and play. I don’t want to worry about guys breaking into people’s houses,” he said.

That’s something we can all relate to.