OCEANSIDE – Police arrested a 40-year-old man Wednesday on suspicion of kidnapping after he walked into a neighbor's apartment, took a knife from a butcher block and threatened to kill a 3-year-old child.

Authorities were called to the complex on Douglas Drive near North El Camino Real around 6 p.m. by a woman who said her three children were being threatened by a man inside her apartment, said police spokeswoman Kim Rainwater.

The woman told police she was in her kitchen and her children, ages 3, 5, and 7, were playing on a patio when she heard a man yelling that he was going to kill them. The man was shirtless and wearing jeans.

She sent the children into a bedroom and told them to lock the door.

The man, who witnesses said was agitated and angry, then opened the closed front door, entered the woman's apartment and walked toward a butcher block of knives, Rainwater said.

The mother told her children to run from the apartment and that's when the intruder picked up the child. The child was able to struggle and break free from the man's grasp and run away.

The first police officer who arrived at the apartment confronted the man in the hallway, where the man took a fighting stance and threatened the officer. Rainwater said the officer used a baton to push the man to the ground and handcuff him.

He was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, making criminal threats and residential burglary and was being held in county jail on $195,000 bail. Police said they believed the man lived in an apartment in another area of the complex.

When he was questioned later, the man denied going in the apartment and said he had no recollection of the incident.

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