Police say a man and a woman broke into the home of Nayeli Garzon-Jimenez through the back door while her husband was at work. Garzon-Jimenez was on the phone with her husband, Adolfo Angeles-Morales, at the time of the break-in.
"She started screaming and crying, and said, 'Someone just stuck their hand in the door,'" Angeles-Morales told WISH-TV. "The guy said, 'Give me the money or we take the baby.'"
"The man said, 'Money, money,'" Garzon-Jimenez said. "I said, 'I don't have any.'"
The woman then grabbed her 3-month-old girl and attempted to flee through the back door.
"But there was something else waiting for her at the back door," WISH-TV reported.
"One of the doggies," a pit bull mix, "didn't let her go through the back door," Angeles-Morales explained.
The woman turned around, "threw the baby back" at Garzon-Jimenez and the perpetrators fled the scene.
The mother, who was hit in the head with a gun during the melee, was treated for cuts and bruises at a local hospital, and was released. The baby was unharmed.
Indianapolis police are now searching for the suspects: "a black man around 35 years old, 6-foot-2, heavy set with light skin, a close-cut beard and acne scars" and "a black woman in her mid-20s about 5-foot-10, heavy build with braided hair pulled back in a ponytail" and "two lip piercings and an eyebrow piercing."
They were driving "a 2002-2007 chocolate-brown van with tinted windows and windows that extend down the passenger side."
There might be a dent in the passenger-side door, police added.