KENOSHA -- A 12-year-old Kenosha girl is recovering with her family after being stabbed by a stranger.
Joey Zamaro was stabbed twice by the stranger, inside her home. Both stab wounds were right along her spine.
Friends and loved ones keep stopping by to hug Zamaro. The little girl and her mother are still in shock over what happened Sunday morning.
Zamaro was heading to a birthday party around 11:30 a.m. when she ran back in the house to grab a card she had forgotten. She didn't even glance at the woman walking down the sidewalk toward her.
"While I am opening the door she grabs my arm and stabs me twice and then throws me on the couch," says Joey Zamaro.
Joey's mother could only watch in horror.
"I start screaming, 'Who are you? Get out of my house! What are you doing?' But she is standing there with a knife," says Nicole Zamaro, mother.
She grabbed a knife, but wasn't sure what to do. Nicole's 10-year-old and 8-year-old sons were in the room behind her, and Joey was pinned to the couch by a woman police identified as Jennifer Hernandez, 34. That's when her neighbor came running in with a bat.
"Pretty much swung at her a couple times cause I seen her with a knife, chased her out," says neighbor Joe Campo.
Campo says he followed her because he saw Hernandez heading towards the school with the knife, where more children were playing. He says he heard her mutter about the devil a few times, but Campo was focused on getting her to drop the knife.
By then other neighbors came to help and they held Hernandez surrounded at the school until police got there. The woman was arrested, and Joey was taken to the hospital.
She has a 1-inch and 3-inch stab wound right along her spine, but her mom says she is lucky.
"It missed all of her vital organs," says Nicole Zamaro.
Joey says the whole thing still feels like a bad dream. Her mom says her daughter is her hero.
"She is so strong, I know she is scared though. And scared of the lady," says Nicole Zamaro.
Jennifer Hernandez is charged with first degree attempted intentional homicide, aggravated battery, and burglary.
