The Denver district attorney’s office said Friday it won’t file criminal charges against a southeast Denver homeowner who told police he feared for his life when he fatally shot a would-be intruder outside his home this month.

“The case was declined based on a review of the specific facts in light of Colorado laws pertaining to self-defense and defense of others,” DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough wrote in a statement.

The man told homicide detectives he worried the intruder “would hurt anybody he came in contact with” when he shot him during a July 7 encounter at his home in the 3200 block of South Glencoe Street.

Police reports show Charles McLaughlin, 29, tried to force his way through the front door of the home. The homeowner, whom The Denver Post is not identifying because he is not charged with a crime, told detectives that he and his girlfriend managed to shut and lock the door, but McLaughlin continued. He said he could hear McLaughlin pounding on the door as he retrieved a 9mm pistol and chambered a round. His girlfriend called 911 before the shooting.

When the pounding stopped, the man said he worried that McLaughlin had moved to another part of the house, near a child’s room, so he stepped onto his porch and found McLaughlin in his girlfriend’s daughter’s truck.

He told police he told McLaughlin to leave and warned “that he had a pistol and he would shoot if the man did not stop,” police reports say. Instead, McLaughlin rushed toward the man, who fired twice. Witnesses gave police a similar account of the night’s events.

Neither the homeowner nor McLaughlin’s relatives could be reached for comment Friday.

McLaughlin’s friend told detectives they had been drinking during the evening, and McLaughlin passed out. His friend decided to take him to a relative’s house in the 3200 block of Glencoe, where he left McLaughlin in the car to “sleep off the drunk.”

When he went to check on McLaughlin, he was gone and a group of people had gathered outside a neighbor’s house. Then he noticed McLaughlin on the ground, bleeding from gunshot wounds.