Xavier Leathers is 12 years old and was sleeping on the couch in his mother’s house in Temple Hills, Maryland, when a noise suddenly woke him up.
It was his mother’s boyfriend, 42-year-old Ronnie McCain, who had entered the apartment and was holding her by the neck. Xavier says he didn’t think twice: “something in my body told me I had to act, or something bad was going to happen; she probably wouldn’t live to tell about it”. He ran to the kitchen, grabbed the sharpest knife he could find, and returned to the room, where McCain was trying to hold her with his other arm. Causing him two wounds near the ribs.
Police arrived at the house in the 2900 block of Brinkley Road shortly after midnight on Saturday. McCain was taken to a hospital with minor injuries and later released; he faces a first-degree assault charge. Xavier’s mother also ended up in the hospital and later requested a protective order. “I didn’t know why he had stopped choking me until I heard the police say that he had been stabbed. I thought, ‘no, not my son,’ but they told me he was okay, that he was defending you”, she recounted. “I am grateful that he was brave, because I probably wouldn’t be here.”
