(CNN) -- A Florida man said two armed men invaded his home and were beating him when his wife, eight months pregnant, saved the day by shooting one of the intruders with a semiautomatic rifle, CNN affiliate Bay News 9 reported.
Investigators found the suspect "dead at the scene," the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said in a release Wednesday.
"Them guys came in with two normal pistols and my AR stopped it," Jeremy King told Bay News 9. "(My wife) evened the playing field and kept them from killing me."
The couple told investigators she had fired one shot, the sheriff's office said.
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King said the men were hooded and masked when they broke into his Lithia house, outside Tampa. The men pulled a pistol on him, grabbed his 11-year-old daughter and demanded "everything you got," Bay News 9 reported.
When one of the men started pistol-whipping him and the other was kicking him, his wife looked out of a back bedroom to see what was happening.
One of the men shot at her, sending her back into the bedroom to get the AR-15 rifle.
"When he came toward the back door in her line of sight, she clipped him," King told the CNN affiliate.
Both men ran off, and deputies found the dead man in a ditch close to the house, authorities said.
The sheriff's office said it tried to find the second suspect using aircraft and dogs, with no success.
Authorities said the firearm the woman used was in the home legally.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the rifle used was a semiautomatic.
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