Two armed “polygamist women” dressed like “ninjas” were subdued by a sword-wielding man during a home invasion, according to police in suburban Utah.

Police said the two women, aged 18 and 22, were attacking the home of a witness and victim in a criminal child sex assault case against a man the women called their “husband”.

The women “violently attacked one of the adult males in the house who came to see who was coming,” Ian Adams of the West Jordan police department told the Guardian.

“Another adult male joined the fray in defense of the first male victim. He was armed with a sword, and using a sword … and with the other male [was] able to subdue the two women until police arrived and took them into custody.”

The attack took place just before 4am on Friday. The child witness was home but was not involved in the incident, Adams said.



The two women are in custody at Salt Lake County Jail. Neither their names nor mugshots, nor the name of the “husband”, are being released, because to do so could identify the child victim.

Adams said: “They’re all related.”

Another officer with West Jordan police said the sex assault complaint was against the victim’s uncle.

Two women clad in ninja costumes, armed with knives and stun guns, forced their way through the door. The family believes they were there to abduct a 15-year-old girl inside.



One of the men who subdued the women was interviewed by the local Fox 13 new station. “I went to the bottom of the stairs and saw a couple of ninjas coming down,” the man was quoted as saying. “They were all dark gray or black, and they had black rubber gloves on and masks. All I could see was their eyes.”

The women are both charged with aggravated burglary, aggravated assault and witness tampering, all felonies. After the attack, Adams said, “the two female suspects claimed to be the wives of the male who’s sitting in custody on the child sex offenses”.



“I’ve never seen anything like this in my career,” said Adams. “I have a feeling that as this investigation progresses we’ll have more details. It’s still kind of fresh.”

Adams said he could not provide any further information about the type of sword that had been used to subdue the women.

West Jordan is a suburb of Salt Lake City, and is home to about 110,000 people, according to the US Census Bureau.

Plural marriage was practised in Utah by members of the Mormon church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, until the 1890s, when it was rejected by the church and banned by the state.

In August, an appeals court in Utah partially lifted the ban, allowing a man and a woman to marry and live with others they consider “spouses”, after a lawsuit by stars of the cable network show Sister Wives.