Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Amar Gandhi says a California father who opened fire on an armed attacker Sunday to save his family is a “hero.”

The father and his wife were in bed in their Carmichael, California, apartment Sunday morning when 33-year-old Alonzo Brown came looking for his girlfriend around 1:00 a.m., CBS News reported.

Brown’s girlfriend was not in the apartment, but he believed she was, so he allegedly began trying to kick in the door.

He then allegedly looked into the bedroom window, where he and the wife “made eye contact,” after which Brown allegedly opened fire, shattering glass.

The wife said, “He saw me and we made eye contact and the next thing I know I am jumping out of bed because the glass is breaking,”

The husband retrieved his gun and returned fire, striking Brown with an unknown number of rounds.

Afterward, the husband said, “You cannot just let him come in the house with a gun.”

“It was a good thing that I had a gun. Just imagine if there was no gun.”

Sergeant Ghandi praised the father, saying, “That resident’s a hero. Obviously, he defended himself, he defended his property.” Moreover, KCRA quoted Ghandi saying, “The best part about this was that the resident at the apartment, who was a legal firearm owner, actually fired back.”

The gun in Brown’s possession was deemed to be illegal.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.