A mother in Tennessee was forced to pull out the big guns Monday morning after a home intruder forced his way into her house as four more suspects waited outside.

Elsie Lee, who lives alone with her son, told WJJB TV that she awoke to the sounds of someone inside her house.

“We were asleep, and I thought I had heard something but I wasn’t for sure,” Lee recalled. “I thought I was just dreaming something, and then I heard a big bang again.”

“I got up and came running through the hallway,” she continued. “The guy was standing in the kitchen. He had just busted my door open.”

Lee then reached for her .45-caliber handgun and her shotgun and forced the intruder out of her home.

“I put the gun in his face and asked him if there was something I could do for him, and he was gone just that quick,” Lee told WJJB TV. “I chased him out the back door.”

“I almost killed him,” she added. “One of them could have been dead. Had he not ran, he would have been dead.”

Lee told WJJB TV that the only thought running through her mind that morning was “protect my son.”

Mere minutes after she chased the man away, Madison County police arrived on scene and arrested all five men, one of whom was a minor. Each suspect is being charged with aggravated burglary. None were armed.

Lee couldn’t have been more thankful to the police and how quickly they responded.

“I congratulate our sheriff’s department for what they did,” the mother told WJJB TV. “And it couldn’t have been done any faster or better.”

Well done, Elsie!!