First he strapped on his prosthetic leg. Then he grabbed a lamp.

New Sudbury homeowner Tim Ranger had just gone to sleep on Saturday around 9 p.m. — "our kids get up early," he explains — when he heard one of the family’s two dogs growling.

The kids, a boy just shy of five and a girl nearly two, were asleep in their rooms. His wife Crystal, a nurse, had been called in for a night shift at the hospital.

"When the dog growled, I knew something was off," he says. "So I put my leg on and grabbed the lamp."

Ranger lost his leg below the knee when he was cycling on Regent Street at the age of 10 and was struck by a transport. Now 34, he’s had a lot of years to get used to the device, which he can snap on quickly with the use of a pin.

He’s not, however, accustomed to finding strangers lurking in his house.

In this case, he emerged from his bedroom to encounter a scruffy young man in the hallway, on the verge of entering daughter Isla’s room.

"He had one leg over the baby gate," Ranger says. "When I saw that, I went into dad mode. I hit him with the lamp a couple of times, and bodychecked him into the bathroom."

Despite the amputation in his youth, Ranger remains quite agile, and also very strong. He weighs more than 300 pounds, a lot of it muscle. When fitted for his wedding, the span of his shoulders measured 54 inches, notes Crystal.

The couple would later ascertain the invader crawled through their kitchen window, removing a screen and leaving his shoes outside on the deck. There was also a bicycle stashed nearby.

At the moment, Ranger just knew there was a strange man inside, seemingly on drugs or unstable, and he wanted him out, or contained until the police could be summoned.

He says he "bull-rushed" him into the bathroom, using his superior bulk, and shoved him into the space between the vanity and the toilet. "I scanned the area and concluded he could use the top of the toilet against me, so I grabbed that and used it myself," he says.

He struck the invader across the face with the porcelain lid "like a baseball bat," he says. When that wasn’t enough to subdue him, he brought it down on top of his head, breaking it in two.

Still, the man resisted. "I kept telling him to lay down and I was going to call the cops," Ranger says. "And he was saying, ‘No way are you calling the cops’ and coming at me."

While he works as a rehabilitation specialist these days, helping people recover from catastrophic injuries, Ranger studied corrections and knows a thing or two about self-defence and subduing aggressive individuals.

"I put him in a chokehold," he says. "After I choked him out and he went limp, I eased up on him. I didn’t want to kill him."

He says he dragged the gasping man into his bedroom, threw him beside the bed, and dialled 911. But before he could talk to the dispatcher, the man got a second wind and started to come at him again.

"I saw my buck knife beside the bed that had fallen and put it at him, saying ‘Don’t resist,’" Ranger says. "He was trying to slip around and take the knife, so I punched him a couple of times and cut my hand. Then I started hitting him with the butt end of the knife and split his head open."

Crystal, who rushed home from work as soon as she got a call about what happened, arrived to a shocking scene. "The bedroom looked horrific," she says. "There was blood all over the walls, the sheets."

Ranger himself only suffered the one wound on his hand, likely from connecting with the intruder’s teeth, and was later administered antibiotics in case of infection.

At the time he didn’t know, however, what the man might do if he allowed him room to manoeuvre. The individual was wearing cargo shorts with lots of pockets, he notes, and could have been carrying a knife.

The altercation in the bedroom was "all recorded at the police station," he says, as he’d dropped the phone after calling 911 to deal with the revived assailant. "I had to scream out our address while fighting him," he says.

Unfortunately the intruder slipped away from the Westmount Avenue abode just minutes before police arrived. Ranger says he effectively ushered the man out the door, because he was so bloodied he couldn’t hold onto him anymore.

Greater Sudbury Police tried to track the man, using their canine unit and spotlights, and following whatever blood track was present, but were unsuccessful in locating him.

They did get prints off the screen window, however, says Ranger, and he was able to provide a decent description.

The suspect is described as a white man in his late teens or early 20s, with scruffy black hair and facial scruff. He was clad at the time in a blue T-shirt and black cargo shorts.

Ranger says he has no idea who the person is and is equally mystified why his house was targetted, but remains skeptical the man was merely looking for valuables.

"All our belongings are downstairs — my wallet was there, TV, laptop, the keys for my truck — and he went straight for our daughter’s room," he says.

For that reason he feels it’s "important to get this out there" and warn other residents to take precautions against a potential break-in of the same nature.

The man gave strange explanations when Ranger demanded to know why he was in the house. "He said he’d heard screams and someone told him to come in here," he says. "He said he was under the influence but he didn’t seem drunk. It was all excuses to not call the cops."

Ranger says he hasn’t slept much since Saturday night due to the adrenalin, but he’s grateful it was "me who was home, and not just my wife."

The kids are fine, and were milling around Monday afternoon, showing off some toys. Isla, the little girl, didn’t even wake up during all the commotion on Saturday night, her parents marvel.

Levi, the boy, did wake up and was scared, hiding under his covers in bed. He had some company and protection, though, from the family’s German shepherd Abby.

"As soon as I came out into the hall, she went into my son’s room," says Ranger.

It was their smaller dog, Millie, whose growls drew the presence of the intruder to his attention.

Both parents posted remarks at a social media site on Monday to explain what happened and counteract some posts that scolded them for not locking their doors or otherwise preventing the break-in. "Our doors were locked," says Crystal. "We just went through this traumatic experience, and we’re getting victim-blaming."

She says they normally secure their windows too, but it was so hot that night they left the kitchen one open "a crack" for a draft. "We’re getting central air now," she says.

The idea of someone breaking in and her children being in jeopardy has always been her greatest fear, she says, and getting the call at work, without yet knowing all the details of the incident, was a terrifying experience.

"I feel awful that I wasn’t present, but it was better Tim confronted him than me," she says.

As for her husband’s actions in a crisis, Crystal says she couldn’t be more proud. The two met in their teens and have been a couple for 18 years.

"Some people are saying we should train our dogs to do bite work protection," she says. "But I don’t need the dogs to do that, because I have my husband."

Ranger says the dogs might not have pounced on the intruder, but neither does he want the pets, who are very gentle with the children, to be taught to be aggressive.

"They did their job and alerted me," he says. "They did what they had to do."

Ranger says his own actions were pure reflex — and that he used his self-defence training and judgement to handle the scare as best he could — but he doesn’t consider himself a hero.

"The main thing is I got him out of the house, for the kids," he says.

As for a repeat visit from the same person, Ranger says he’s not too worried.

"I think I got him," he says. "He knows not to come back."

jmoodie@postmedia.com