A Georgia woman saved her own life and the lives of her three children when she fatally shot a gang member who entered her home early Thursday morning.
Shaquita Green called police around 2:30 a.m. to report that she had shot an intruder in her Cobb County home.
“It was either him or me, and I wasn’t going,” Green told local news affiliate WSBTV. “My kids weren’t going to get hurt and they weren’t going to see me get hurt.”
Green said she didn’t know the man, who has since been identified as 27-year-old Keandre Funches.
Marietta police have said the incident was gang-related, and witnesses said Green let Funches and another man, Javarian Mitchell, inside her home before the shooting, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported.
Green said the two men were looking for her husband, who wasn’t home.
“At some point, Funches threatened the residents with his own hand gun,” Marietta Officer Chuck McPhilamy told the AJC.
Funches forced Green and her children to the back of the house and demanded to speak to the children’s father, Green told WSBTV.
“That’s when I stepped in front of them and said, ‘You don’t have to do all of that,’” she said.
Out of fear for her own safety and that of her children, Green managed to get hold of a gun and fatally shoot Funches, police said.
Mitchell was taken into custody later that day. He has been charged with murder ― in Georgia, a person can be charged with murder if they commit a felony that leads to someone’s death ― as well as aggravated assault with a firearm, third-degree cruelty to children and false imprisonment.
Green was not injured and has not been charged with a crime.
“I thank God it played out the way it did,” she said. “I hate that someone had to lose their life, but he shouldn’t have come and brought his ass in my house, excuse my language.”