BEECH BLUFF, Tenn. — A quiet Monday morning took a sudden, terrifying turn for a Madison County mother.

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

It is a Monday morning Lee will never forget.

“Protect my son,” Lee said. She said that was the only thing going through her mind when she woke up to someone in her home and others waiting outside.

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

She knew something was not right.

“I got up and came running through the hallway and my gun was sitting on the dog cage, and the guy was standing in the kitchen. He had just busted my door open,” Lee said.

Lee then grabbed her .45-caliber handgun and her shotgun.

“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 said. “I chased him out the back door trying to look at the tag number on the car, something I could describe other than just him.”

Within an hour, Madison County deputies arrested Quentin Childress, 20, of Jackson, Jaylon Chiles, 18, of Biloxi, Miss., Amar Johnson, 21, of Jackson, Kendrick McMullin, 19, of Jackson, and a juvenile male. Each is charged with aggravated burglary.

“It’s that time of the year where kids will be getting out of school, bored with nothing to do, so you will see a lot more activities, especially burglaries,” Madison County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Tom Mapes said.

Lee is thanking the heroes who have now given her something the five suspects stole — peace.

“I say they were ‘Johnny on the spot,'” Lee said. “They were here within three minutes. I congratulate our sheriff’s department for what they did [Monday], and it couldn’t have been done any faster or better.”

Lee says she does not believe the burglars were armed.

The four adults who were arrested are scheduled to make their first court appearance Thursday morning.