KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A suspected shooter is in Kansas City, Missouri, police custody, thanks in part to a neighbor who took on who he describes as a “mad man with an axe.”

The man some neighbors near NE 38th Street and North Flora Avenue are calling a hero says he usually doesn’t carry his fishing knife. But he used it and a strategically placed brush pile to subdue the suspect until police arrived.

The bullet holes and broken windows at homes along North Flora and Wayne Avenues tell only part of the story of the terrifying ordeal that unfolded in the Kansas City neighborhood around 6:30 Wednesday night.

Neighbors say it started as a man parked his car in a driveway and started going from home to home saying he was looking for his brother.

Police say one man was shot in the 3800 block of N. Flora Ave. Then neighbors say the man continued toward N. Wayne Ave. shooting at homes and trying to get inside homes and vehicles.

David Nelson his girlfriend and her grandchildren were playing outside on the trampoline when that suspected gunman reached their block with a new weapon.

“Then he started coming toward this house. Why is he coming house to house with an axe? So I wanted to confront him,” Nelson said.

Nelson said he was met outside the home next door with a crazy looking smile.

“I said what are you doing with an axe in your hand and he said ‘F you’ and swung it right at my head, and I went back like this,” Nelson said falling toward the ground.

His girlfriend screamed, which Nelson thinks alerted police headed to the shooting. But he still had to defend himself. He remembered he had his knife as he’d planned to go fishing.

“I wasn’t really scared for me, I was scared for everybody else. I figured I could dance around him until somebody could come and help but luckily he didn’t have any bullets in his gun so somebody was looking out for me,” Nelson said.

Police arrived and Nelson said after about 10 minutes they were able to get the suspect to surrender, not far from his neighbor’s large pile of sticks he used to keep that axe out of reach from his head.

“I was going to move it for him so we can burn it in our burn pile but I’m going to leave it here now maybe,” he said laughing.

Police haven’t released information on the suspect. The shooting victim was taken to the hospital in critical condition.