[chris]

A 12-year-old girl who walked into a market northwest of Detroit with a loaded handgun and tried to rob it was overpowered by employees who recognized her behind a bandanna and held her on the floor until sheriff's deputies arrived, Oakland County authorities said.

The attempted holdup happened on a Friday night in April 2011 at the Country Lake Market on North Milford Road in Highland Township, roughly 30 miles northwest of Detroit. No one was hurt. Deputies recovered a 9 mm pistol with a round in the chamber.

According to a recording of the call to 911, a store employee told a dispatcher that a co-worker was holding down a crying, masked girl who had just tried to rob the business at gunpoint. One of the workers recognized the girl despite the bandanna over her face.

Investigators said the girl had broken into a house to steal the pistol before the robbery attempt. Oakland County prosecutors charged her as a juvenile with armed robbery rather than as an adult, a decision Assistant Prosecutor Paul Walton confirmed to The Oakland Press. Charged as an adult, she could have faced up to life in prison. She was held at the county's Children's Village.

"Thankfully, this had a positive outcome, at least in terms of injury or death," Sheriff Michael Bouchard told The Detroit News.

The girl's father told reporters she had turned 12 the previous month and said she acted out of a misguided wish to help her mother, believing the family was about to lose their home. Investigators did not publicly confirm a motive.