Arizona woman says 'raging' stranger tried to break down her front door: 'Then I shot. I fired.'

An Arizona woman says that she fired through her front door in order to protect herself and her 16-year-old son when a strange man tried to break it down.

The harrowing incident began over the weekend as Jenele Williams and her son tried to leave their apartment in order to go to the grocery store. Instead, they ran back inside. She said that she saw a man yelling and screaming at the apartment complex.

She says the man turned his attention to her apartment and started trying to break down her door after he saw her.

"I opened my door like a deer caught in headlights. We make eye contact and I was like, oh you’re right here," she told KSAZ-TV. "To almost knock a door down like that, you have to be really raging."

She said she retrieved her gun and warned him before firing.

"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 added that she remembered she was in a stand-your-ground state, and that encouraged her to fire in order to defend herself.

"It’s not the shooting range. It’s real life," Williams explained. "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 called police, and they arrived but were unable to identify the alleged suspect. Williams believes that the man was involved in a domestic violence situation with another tenant in the apartment complex.

She added that she was a survivor of domestic violence herself and that her father had recently told her to buy a gun in order to protect herself.

"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," she said. "I’m very happy that I did."

Here's the interview with Williams:

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