Real Life Home Alone

St. Paul, MN

The hit movie "Home Alone" about a boy thwarting burglars with imaginative mayhem, wasn't total fantasy. Just ask the guy who tried to break in while 13-year-old Ryan Hendrickson was home alone.

Ryan was watching television Wednesday night when he heard a noise that sounded like a window screen being cut.

"I ran to the closet and grabbed a bat," Ryan said Thursday. "I went...into the dining room, where I saw him cutting the window with a knife. He put his left hand in first and I was waiting for his right hand to come in...and I took the baseball bat and I hit him as hard as I could."

The man ran. Ryan called 911.

Police, while cautioning Ryan to call 911 first next time, did enjoy the fact that the kid got in the first lick against a bad guy.