Neighbor "terrified" after shot home invader collapses in driveway

WALTON COUNTY, Ga. — The neighbor of a woman who shot an intruder inside her Walton County home believes she saw the same man casing her neighborhood just days earlier.

Mandy Grimes told Channel 2's Kerry Kavanaugh she was in front of her house as the man came walking up to her with multiple gunshot wounds asking for help.

"I was terrified. I didn't know what was going on when I saw him. Honestly, I felt trapped," Grimes said. "He wouldn't stop. He was continuing to walk."

Grimes said he didn't stop until she said she was calling 911.

"He turned and fell onto that electrical box right there," Grimes said, pointing to where the man fell.

At that point she had no idea what just unfolded at her neighbors' home on Henderson Ridge Drive.

Kavanaugh obtained the 911 call made by the home invasion victim's husband.

"He's in the bedroom? OK, shhh, shhh, relax. Just remember everything that I showed you, everything that I taught you, alright?" he said as he was on the phone with the operator and his wife who shot the man inside their home.

Investigators said the mother grabbed her 9-year-old twins and her hand gun. She locked a bedroom door, a bathroom door and a closet door. The family hid in an attic crawl space.

Investigators say Paul Slater, 32, used a crow bar to pry past all three then found the mother with her gun.

"She shot him, she's shooting him. She's shooting him. She's shooting him. She's shooting him. Shoot him again. Shoot him. Oh no," the woman's husband said on the 911 call.

As soon as Mandy Grimes reached the 911 operator, she found out how the man became so badly wounded in her yard.

"I said, 'he said he'd been shot,' and that's when she said get inside, get your kids," Grimes said.

Deputies said despite five gunshot wounds, Slater got out of the house and into his SUV. He crashed just up the road.

"We immediately sat up in the bed and we looked at each other and said, 'We've seen this car before," Grimes said.

Grimes and her husband Marc said they are certain it was the same SUV they spotted checking out their neighborhood days earlier.

"He stopped in the cul-de-sac and he sat there for a minute and he slowly came driving back by," said Marc Grimes.

"I stay at home with five kids. So, it's nerve-wracking to know this happened, happened to my neighbor, and you just never know," said Mandy Grimes.

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WSBTV