A 7-year-old boy in Texas helped free his mother after she was tied up and robbed in her house at gun point Sunday night, police said.
The 41-year-old mother, who asked to remain anonymous, told ABC News that she was putting her kids in the car when three men armed with handguns approached her in the driveway in Houston.
"I wanted to protect my children because they were so scared," the victim said, speaking through a translator.
One of the men pushed her inside of the house and forced her to cooperate by threatening to kill her oldest son, 7, and by throwing the youngest son, 2, inside the house, she said.
"Because I don't speak English, they took my oldest son so he could translate for me," the woman said. "My boy was scared. They told him they were going to kill him, but he just stopped crying so he could translate for me."
Once inside the house, the robbers tied the woman up but left the boys untied and forced all three to lie down on the kitchen floor, the victim said. One of the men hit her on the head four times with the back of the gun and she started to bleed, she said.
While the family was on the floor, the men ransacked the house and made threats to the woman demanding to know the location of the safe, said Jodi Silva, spokesperson for the Houston Police Department
"Once they located the safe they took the cash out of it and fled the scene," Silva said.
The three men left the house with the money from the safe and didn't take anything else, police said. Silva could not disclose to ABC News the exact amount taken from the house but Silva said it was "significant."
However, ABC News affiliate KTRK reported earlier today that the men took about $6,000.
The victim told ABC News she couldn't think of anyone who could have known about the safe.
After being tied for about an hour, the oldest boy managed to free himself and helped untie his mother and brother and the mom called 911, Silva said.
The children were not hurt during the incident, the victim said.
She wasn't able to give the police a description of the men as all three were wearing dark clothes and masks, Silva said.
The victim said her nephews heard on the radio that a similar robbery had happened just hours later after her family had been attacked, but police said this may be an isolated incident.
The victim said she doesn't feel safe in this neighborhood anymore and she is thinking about moving.
"You can imagine how I feel. I don't even want to go inside my house anymore," said the victim. "My husband is scared for me and for my children."