JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – When a Jacksonville father heard what sounded like someone breaking into his home overnight, he said he rushed to his newborn daughter's defense.

Now, he said, he’s being punished as a result.

It was around midnight March 29 when Mikel Giustiniani awoke to his dogs barking. His security lights switched on. Armed with a gun, he stormed out of the family’s Mandarin home to confront the intruder.

“I opened the door and fired off a warning shot to make them stop doing what they were doing because I knew her window was next,” the 31-year-old father told News4Jax on Friday.

And that’s where Giustiniani and police find themselves at odds.

The officer who answered his 911 call cited him for discharging a firearm on residential property, a misdemeanor offense. The Sheriff’s Office said it appears there was no imminent threat to his family’s lives or property.

But Giustiniani contends he feared for the safety of his newborn child, who was fast asleep roughly 20 feet away from where the window shattered. “I have a two-month-old baby right next door. It could have been way worse,” he said.

He wants the charges dropped.

There are multiple laws, namely the castle doctrine, that protect Giustiniani from criminal prosecution, according to attorney Eric Friday, lead counsel for the gun rights group Florida Carry.

“When you’re that close to the house and trying to get in, it doesn’t matter if you go outside to deal with it,” said Friday. “The fact is somebody is trying to break into your house. In Florida, deadly force is allowed.”

In fact, there’s also a specific exemption within the state law under which Giustiniani was cited. Among other things, the law states it is not illegal to discharge a firearm on residential property if a person is “lawfully defending life or property.”

Giustiniani lives next to a church in a typically quiet neighborhood dotted with single-family homes. His closest neighbor lives across the street. In his mind, he acted in self-defense when he fired a warning shot into the ground in his front yard.

But Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Chris Hancock said Giustiniani’s case does not appear to qualify for self-defense, adding that “by his own admission, (he) never observed anyone in or around his home prior to and up to him discharging a firearm in his front yard.”

Hancock noted that there are avenues available to people if they believe they were cited mistakenly.

For now, Giustiniani said he’s got plenty to worry about. Forget his fear about a future break-in, he doesn’t know how he’ll afford an attorney to fight a citation he believes isn’t justified.