Two men armed with handguns stormed into a Columbia apartment, demanded money and struck a 39-year-old woman in the head and kicked her in the back, police reported.

The woman was treated at Howard County General Hospital for minor injuries and released.

Police said that about 8 p.m. two men knocked on the apartment door in the 8700 block of Hayshed Lane in Long Reach. The woman's 5-year-old daughter answered the door and the two men, clad in stocking caps and black gloves, barged in, police said.

They pulled out guns and demanded money and jewelry, police said. The woman struggled with them and screamed for help before being kneed in the back and hit on the head with a gun, police said.

The men fled in a dark gold or beige car, police said. Nothing was stolen.

The woman's neighbors heard her daughter screaming, "Mommy, Mommy," turned down the television and heard the mother yelling for help. "They sounded muffled, very far away," said Peter Choe, 40. "Then I heard the mother screaming."

Choe and Gemma Choi, who also lives in an apartment across the hall, called 911.

"I didn't know what to tell them," Choi said. The victim wouldn't open her door and told Choi to tell dispatchers "that she almost got killed, send a police," Choi said.

Pub Date: 6/02/98