DETROIT -- Detroit police said two men should be hailed as heroes for saving a 6-year-old girl's life Thursday.

"I told her, 'Honey you didn't do nothing wrong. Come over to me,'" said James Allen Mazzie, one of the men who rescued the girl from an attempted sexual assault.

Police said the girl was in the front yard of her Southwest Detroit home, when a man abducted her, and took her inside an abandoned house.

Mazzie, who lives near the vacant home, said he heard some crying and peeked into the home and saw the man hunched over something.

"She (the girl) was behind a cabinet and he was like huddled over her," said, Mazzie, who immediately ran to get a friend. "He (my friend) grabbed a bat. I grabbed my cane and we came outside with both our dogs, the pitbull and a german sheppard."

According to Mazzie, when they got back to the vacant home, they found the man, half-naked, on top of the girl. "She was crying and saying 'please stop, you're hurting me. please stop.'"

When the men approached the man, he jumped out of the window and ran down the alley.

"I grabbed her and I had a towel (from the porch)," Mazzie said. "I put the towel around her and my friend went after him (the man)."

"I said 'Sweetie, do you know who that was? She said yeah, that's Mikey.'" Mazzie said.

The girl's mother told police Mikey is her brother's name and that he lived nearby. A short time later, Detroit police arrested a man identified by police as 33-year-old Mikeal Branham.

"He's my brother," said the girl's mother, who asked not to be identified. "You just never think a brother would do something like this to somebody."

The girl's mother said her daughter is starting to recover from the attack and is thankful for her rescuers.

"My daughter asked me, 'Mommy I want to know the nice man's name. I want to know that nice man who saved me,'" the mother said.

The mother thanked the men again on Friday and said her daughter "still has faith in people."

"I'm just glad she wasn't hurt," added Mazzie. "I"m glad that she wasn't killed and that it wasn't too late. I'm pretty sure he didn't get the time to do what he was going to do."

Police said Branham is charged with kidnapping, assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct, malicious destruction of property and resisting and obstructing a police officer.