"Here's this huge man standing there with my daughter in his arms and has knife pointing toward her side," Alicia Keating describes her ordeal of seeing her young girl taken hostage in a Walmart in Midwest City, Oklahoma on June 17.
"My first reaction was this can't be real. Does h really have my baby? Who is this?", she told the "Today" show on Wednesday.
It ws a little more than two weeks ago when Keating's daughter Zoey was snatched from her shopping cart by a reportedly mentally deranged man, Sammie Wallace. Surveillance cameras were rolling when police shot and killed him at point-blank range, which ended the hostage standoff.
Keating's daughter Zoey was uninjured and safely returned to her mother. Wallace was a wanted felon with a history of mental illlness, authorities said.
"My heart broke for Sammie Wallace. I didn't know what he was going through. I couldn't believe he died with my daughter in his arms," Keating said. "I couldn't believe it. I just felt sorry for him and I prayed that the Lord would show him mercy... He was just telling me he had kids too."
As the young mother turned around while shopping, her daughter Zoey had been snatched by Wallace. In his other hand, he held a knife.
"I was frantic. Nothing can prepare you, I don't think, for a moment like this," Keating said.
She began to scream and pleaded with him to return her daughter.
Wallace ignored her pleas and the dramatic surveillance video showed one customer, who stepped in to block Wallace from fleeing the store. Keating said the man was a local pastor named Mr. Parker.
"While Mr. Parker was standing there, it stopped Sammie from going anywhere he just stood there. So I thought thank God there's people here trying to help," Keating said.
Within minutes, police arrived and moved Keating to safety away from Wallace, and as the rest of the store was soon evacuated, police began more than 30 minutes of negotiations with Wallace, who police describe was uncooperative.
The tipping point came when Wallace started an ominous 60-second countdown with the knife still close to the toddler's neck., ABC News reported.
With the countdown drawing closer to zero, an officer distracted Wallace, and Captain David Huff soon moved in and fired a single deadly shot to his head from point-blank range, rescuing young Zoey.
