Grandma pummels armed intruder with a rock as her grandson wrestles to get the weapon

Pherrick Thomas Jr. was asleep in his Little River home well past midnight Wednesday when he heard a knock on the door. The next few minutes were mostly a blurry life-or-death wrestling match, but by the time he was able to gather his senses, a woman and a man with a rifle blast to his shoulder were in custody — and Thomas’ 65-year-old grandmother had emerged a hero.

“I yelled for my grandma to go get the girl while I was fighting for the gun,” Thomas said as he lit a cigarette that he said would calm his nerves. “My grandma grabbed something and hit the guy I was struggling with in the forehead. That’s my grandma. I can’t let that happen. That’s when I got super strength and took the rifle, aimed it at him, and boom.”

June Green, 65, who got “sucker-punched” in the face, was otherwise doing fine Thursday afternoon as she recounted the incident. Thomas had cuts and scrapes from his head to his toes, but he, too, survived mostly intact. On Thursday afternoon, police were still questioning the man and woman who charged into Thomas’ home. They hadn’t been named and charges hadn’t yet been filed.

A third suspect had not yet been captured, said Miami-Dade Detective Lee Cowart. Police, who heard the gunfire and said they were at the home in the 1800 block of Northwest 85th Street within a minute, spent more than four hours at the scene interviewing family members and gathering evidence.

Thomas, 26, who works odd landscaping jobs and just found work at an Olive Garden restaurant, said he was awakened just after 2 a.m. by a knock on the door of his bedroom at the back of the home. Thinking it was a friend who had gone to the movies, he didn’t even look outside to see who was there. He was surprised to find a woman, with whom he had a brief fling about two years ago, at the door.

“I recognized her immediately,” he said. “And then I saw a guy walking behind her and asked who it was. He walked up all calm and said give me everything, then he pulled out a gun. So I figured it was fight or flight. So I grabbed for the barrel.”

Thomas, who said he doesn’t like or know how to handle weapons, said he used what he learned from video games to twist the weapon away from the intruder as they wrestled in the dirt behind the home. Then he screamed for his grandmother to “go get the girl,” who was inside his bedroom searching for something.

Green struggled briefly with the woman, she said, then grabbed a rock or a piece of brick and went to help Thomas. As she hit the man in the head with the rock, Thomas wrestled away the rifle, took aim, and opened fire, he said.

“That was the first time I ever fired a gun. But the guy kept fighting for like a minute,” Thomas said.

Green said after a brief tug-of-war with the woman, she went to help her grandson.

“I had my hands around his neck. He hit me. Then some guy sucker-punched me. So I grabbed a brick or a rock, I’m not sure, and I hit him in the head. Then I started going to the face.”

Another man whom Thomas didn’t recognize then showed up and they began wrestling, he said. Finally, the wounded man and the woman took off and jumped into a car. They didn’t get far before police found them. The woman was taken into custody, and the injured man was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital, Cowart said.

Friday afternoon, police released the names of the man and woman that Thomas and his grandmother fought off. Georicka Mathes, 23 and Marqwan Humphrey, 26, were charged with armed robbery with a weapon. Police said the only information Mathes provided on the suspect who was still at-large on Friday is that he is in his 20s and goes by the name of “Smoke.”

This story was originally published March 28, 2019 at 1:39 PM.