‘Do I shoot him?’ Man recounts confronting attacker in deadly Victorville rampage

A man who heroically confronted an attacker armed with a knife and hammer to stop a deadly rampage at a Victorville apartment encountered a frightening scene when he checked on a commotion coming from a neighbor’s residence. 

The man, who asked to be identified only as James, said he entered the apartment above him to see a man striking his neighbor repeatedly with a hammer. The attack, which stemmed from a confrontation between the neighbor and attacker on a stairway, was part of a chaotic chain of events June 11 that left a 49-year-old woman dead and James with stab wounds to his hand and back. 

“I saw he had a hammer in his hand,” James said. “I said, ‘Look, you could kill him with that.’

“‘If you hit him with the hammer, I’m going to have no choice but to put you down,.” Those were my exact words. So I thought if I pulled my pistol out and shoot two warning shots in the air he would back off. Bam, bam! He didn’t budge.”

The man, identified by authorities as 21-year-old Ladale Sanders, dropped the hammer, but then started choking the victim, James said. 

“I’m thinking, what the hell am I going to do? Do I let him kill him? Do I shoot him?”

The 60-year-old Army veteran opened fire, striking Sanders in the buttocks to stop the assault. 

“That was the only way I was going to be able to get him to break,” James said. 

Sanders relented and left the scene, but the violence didn’t end there. James was back in his apartment when the attacker stabbed his neighbor’s mother-in-law, 49-year-old Maria Flores, with a knife. Flores was just returning home from a grand-daughter’s birthday party when she was stabbed and killed in front of her family.

Sanders then broke a window of James’ apartment and stepped inside, still armed with the knife he used to kill Flores. 

“The only thing between him and me and my family is me,” James said. 

James opened fire, striking Sanders as he entered the apartment. James was stabbed three times before he could wrestle the knife away, he said. 

His wounds required stitches and are not considered life-threatening. 

Sanders, whose family lives at the apartment complex, died at the scene. His motives are unclear, but Flores’ daughter, who wished to be identified only as Natalie, said she saw Sanders stab her mother to death “for no reason.” 

“We don’t know this kid. I never met this kid,” Natalie said.

Flores, Natalie’s mother, was a loving mother of seven and a grandmother seven. 

“She loved helping others. She was just the best person in the world to me,” Natalie said.