A Georgia mother shot an ex-convict six times to protect her and her children after he apparently forced his way into the family’s home.

The mom heard knocks on her front door Friday and assumed it was just a solicitor, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

She told her 9-year-old twins not to answer the door and, when the visitor began repeatedly ringing the doorbell, she called her husband at his job and he told her to gather the children and hide.

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According to the Journal-Constitution, the father then dialed 911 and his wife, who works from a home office, hid with the children in a crawlspace.

By that time, according to the paper, the intruder had used a crowbar to forcibly enter the home, and made his way to the home office.

“He opens the closet door and finds himself staring down the barrel of a .38 revolver,” Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The woman fired six bullets, five of which hit Paul Ali Slater in the face and neck area, Chapman said. But Slater, who has arrests dating to 2008 and was released from jail in August, was still conscious.

“The guy’s face down, crying,” the sheriff said. The woman told him to stay down or she’d shoot again.

While down, the woman and her children ran to a neighbor’s house, and the injured intruder made it out of the home and into his car, the paper reported.

Authorities found Slater a short time later bleeding profusely in a neighbor’s driveway.

“I’m dying. Help me,” he told them, according to Chapman.

Slater was transported to Gwinnett Medical Center and is expected to survive, the sheriff said.

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