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PHOENIX - A Phoenix woman took out her gun and started firing at a suspect, through the door, who was trying to break into her apartment.
Jenelle Williams heard a man screaming at someone outside one of the buildings in her apartment complex near Central and Campbell avenues around 1 a.m.
She and her 16-year-old son were running out to the store and she says she went right back in and locked her door.
The suspect started beating her door down.
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Phoenix woman shoots at suspect trying to break into her home
"I opened my door like a deer caught in headlights. We make eye contact and I was like, oh you’re right here," she said. "To almost knock a door down like that, you have to be really raging."
She thought her door was going to be knocked down.
"It was going to come down. I saw it bend in, like bend, not break or crack, just bend. That’s when I was announcing already, ‘Hey, I got a gun, I got a gun. Get away from my house.’ Then, I shot. I fired," she said.
She fired two shots and missed, but it was enough to scare the man away. She was shaken, but she was alive.
She called the police.
"It’s not the shooting range. It’s real life. What went through my head was, ‘This is a stand-your-ground state, this is a stand-your-ground state, so you can defend yourself, Jenelle.' I’m just aiming, and I’m like, 'He’s coming in, you can defend yourself, Jenelle.’ It took a lot of courage to do that," she said.
Phoenix Police have yet to identify or arrest the would-be intruder, but Williams believes it stems from a domestic violence situation with another tenant.
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Something she’s all too familiar with.
"I went back in instinctively. I really believe that comes from my history as a domestic violence survivor. I’ve been out of a domestic violence relationship for over ten years now, but I have that still in me. So I kind of recognized that rage, and that’s why it’s so hard on me because it’s just reopened all the wounds that I worked so hard to close," Williams said.
She says she struggled with the fact that she had to pull the trigger on another human, but she’s proud of herself for likely saving her life, and her son’s life.
"My dad had been telling me to get a gun for a long time and I finally did earlier this year. It just kind of happened. I happened to be there, and they happened to have it and I happened to get it. I’m very happy that I did," she said.
You can learn more about Arizona's self-defense law here.