NEW YORK >> The Utah parents whose 5-year-old daughter was taken from their home say “divine providence” played a hand in keeping them calm and getting her back when her father confronted the suspect.

Stephanie and Aaron Edson were in New York City on Monday, just days after they say they awoke to hear someone in their suburban Salt Lake City home who then left with their daughter Lainey.

Aaron Edson says that when he ran outside Friday morning and saw the man, his gut instinct told him to remain as calm as possible. He says he told the man that Lainey had to stay, and the man released her.

The man had snatched the girl out of her bed in the basement moments earlier after coming in the house through an unlocked door, police said.

Edson says he feels if he had yelled and screamed at the man, “something horrible would have happened.”

A suspect, later identified as Troy Morley, 48, of Roy, Utah, was caught two blocks away after breaking into another house in a middle-class neighborhood in the Salt Lake City suburb of Sandy. Morley was arrested and booked on charges of child kidnapping, burglary, trespassing and resisting arrest.

The 5-year-old girl wasn’t hurt in the frightening experience, but the incident has evoked haunting echoes of when 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was snatched out of her Salt Lake City bedroom in 2002. She was held captive for nine months before being found.

The abduction attempt was not targeted, but a random incident, said Sandy Police Sgt. Dean Carriger. The family said they don’t know Morley.

The intruder was in the family’s basement searching through things when he came upon the girl sleeping in her bedroom, Carriger said. Police don’t know what his motive was.

“It obviously was a very scary, traumatic situation,” Carriger said. “The sanctity of our home is huge and for somebody to enter that and grab your child, it’s got to be one of the worst nightmares a parent could face. … If those parents were not awakened to go out and investigate, he could have easily left undetected with the girl.”

After the 911 call, officers set up a perimeter, and with the help of police dogs, launched a search. The suspect went into a second home two blocks away through a doggy door in an attempt to evade capture. The dogs at that house alerted the residents, who yelled at police already in the area to come get him.

Police captured Morley outside the second home thanks to a police dog that bit the suspect in the upper shoulder, Carriger said.

Morley isn’t on Utah’s sex offender registry and online court records only show a pair of divorces and DUI charges.