Dallas homeowner describes fighting off crime spree suspect who ran into his house

A far northeast Dallas homeowner is talking about the frightening moments when a man on a crime spree stormed into his home.

Dallas police responded to a call around 4 p.m. Wednesday about a woman being held against her will. When officers arrived at the Budget Inn off Forest Lane, the suspect busted out of a window and took off running. He has since been identified as 26-year-old Austin Reed.

While the officers were trying to catch him, police say Reed ran into an apartment complex and carjacked a woman at gunpoint.

SKY 4 picked up the chase shortly after that. The suspect rammed through the gate at the apartment complex off Audelia Road and immediately slammed into a pole.

Reed ran out, jumped the wall into a gated neighborhood, found an open garage and went inside the home. The homeowner, Ron Hernandez, was also inside. He was watching TV and talking about dinner with his roommate when the suspect barged inside his open via an open garage door.

"I stand up and he’s yelling at me ‘Give me your keys! I want your car keys!’ I’m like, ‘No. Who the hell are you?’" Hernandez recalled. "He comes to confront me and assault me. And when he realizes how big I am. He kind of stops, takes out a knife and then charges me. I hit him and shoved him at the same time and throw him over this chair. As I stood up, I threw him this way.”

Hernandez said with the momentum he was able to get away and run for a gun.

“I yelled at my roommate to go barricade himself in the master bedroom so he took off. I went this way and go to the master bedroom where I close the door and lock it,” he recalled. “I go and grab my handgun. You can see on the other side of the wall where the handprint is of his bloody hand. He was following me.”

Hernandez says Reed kicked at the bedroom door and was trying to get in. So Hernandez said he opened it and pointed the gun at the man’s face. The man took off running back into his garage. Hernandez checked on his dog and then followed after the man.

“I ran down the hallway and when I opened my door to my garage, he was on the floor,” he recalled. “And I aimed my gun to him and I realized that police were already on the scene. They had already taken care of business. They told me to drop my weapon. So it was quite an emotional surreal day.”

Reed was shot by police in Hernandez’s garage because police said he refused to put down his knife.

"It’s scary to look down at this blood, it’s terrifying because it could’ve been me actually laying right there," Hernandez said. "There was no emotion, it was about survival and he just didn’t care. He was trying to get away, that was it. It was obvious, live or die."

Hernandez wasn’t the only one with a close encounter with Reed. A teenage boy was home alone when Reed came to his house earlier. That was minutes before police say Reed carjacked someone and then got into Hernandez’s home.

Specks of blood now show just how close 17-year-old Preston Kelley came to danger. He was home when a doorbell camera shows Reed walk up to the front door and bang on it. A gun was tucked in his waistband and a knife was in a sheath on his hip. Seconds later, Reed walked off. Preston opened the door, not knowing a wanted man was just on the other side.

“I thought it was a ding dong ditcher or something,” Preston said. “Then, I saw the blood.”

“If my son had opened the door three seconds earlier, it could have been definitely a different story,” said Margot Kelley, Preston’s mother. “Just seeing him continue to look through our windows and what was he going to do next. It's terrifying to know what could have happened.”

Reed faces six felony charges, including aggravated assault-family violence and aggravated robbery. He was still hospitalized Thursday night with non-life threatening injuries.