Man intervenes with baseball bat to stop father killing his two-year-old daughter

The neighbour said he heard the girl screaming and rushed outside to intervene

32-year-old Kyle Holder said he had to 'get the evil out of his daughter' (KLTV)

A man stopped the brutal assault of a two-year-old girl by wielding a baseball bat on her father.

The neighbour, Don Gilbert, said he did not think twice about intervening in the attack which could have killed the toddler.

32-year-old Kyle Holder has been charged with first degree attempted murder and is being held for $1 million bail, while his daughter remains in critical condition in hospital.

Holder was in his Vancouver motel room with his girlfriend while his daughter was asleep. He then allegedly threw his daughter through the window onto the concrete and started to “stomp on her head”, as reported by KLTV News.

Neighbour Mr Gilbert heard screaming and rushed outside with a baseball bat.

“I’m going to have to get out of here, I don’t know if I can stay,” he told the news channel, still in shock after reporting what he had witnessed.

He said that he saw Holder pick up his daughter several times and slam her down on the ground.

“I hit him once on the back. He had the baby by the feet, took her to the kerb and just and slammed her down, and that’s when I cracked him in the skull, three or four times,” said Mr Gilbert.

The neighbour managed to restrain Holder until police arrived at the Sunnyside Motel and tasered him.

He allegedly told the deputy sheriff: “I did not want to kill her, but I had to,” according to a police report. “I had to do this, I knew I had to crush her head.”

Holder appeared in court with a staple wound to his head and wearing a suicide prevention vest.

Police had responded to a complaint about Holder earlier that day but did not arrest him.

Mr Gilbert said he had noticed Holder acting strangely that day, “babbling about God coming for everybody, and he had to get the evil out of the daughter.”

“The question is why wouldn’t somebody do this? If more people took time to care less about themselves and more time to care about innocent people then we wouldn’t have the crap going on in the world that we do now,” he said, referring to his attempt to intervene.

Holder and his family reportedly moved to the Vancouver motel about three weeks ago from Georgia.