BLUE MOUND, Texas — When two gunmen smashed through the glass front door of her suburban Fort Worth home, Kellie Hoehn didn't think twice.

The 34-year-old mother of two grabbed a shotgun that had been pointed at her face early Wednesday, starting a struggle that ended with one intruder killed with his own weapon and another in the hospital.

"I wasn't going to let them get to my babies," she said, recalling the moment when she pushed up the muzzle of the shotgun, pointing it away from her children's rooms.

Although the intruders told her to keep quiet, she screamed for her husband. She told her 12-year-old son, who was awakened by the sound of the shattering glass front door, to get his 5-year-old sister and hide.

"It was like a horror movie," her husband, 32-year-old Keith Hoehn, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I thought I was a dead man. We're fighting for our lives."

I guess this is an example of Darwin at work.

ndian River County Sheriff’s Office detectives said Thomas Thompson was armed with a knife when he broke into the home on 47th Avenue and woke up Francis Hornsby. She screamed, alerting sons Robert, also known as Paris, 20, and Austin, 19.

“Someone came through our window, had a knife -- they’re in my mom’s room standing over her bed,” Austin Hornsby told WPBF News 25’s Terri Parker. “I chased him out, tackled him midway through the house. My brother came out, shot him with a shotgun, end of story.”

"The way I understand the Castle Doctrine," said sheriff's Detective Chris Cassinari, an investigator on the case, "if someone forcibly breaks into your home — and there is evidence that that's what happened here, since there was evidence of a break-in and the fact that he was armed with a couple of knives — it is reasonable to assume that (the perpetrator) means you bodily harm, and you have the right to defend yourself up to and including the use of deadly force.

"All of the evidence I have to this point," Cassinari added, "indicates that this was a break-in where the resident of a home was protecting himself and his family."

Tom Bakkedahl, chief assistant state attorney for the 19th Judicial Circuit, which includes the Treasure Coast, agreed that the Thompson shooting "appears to be a good example" of the Castle Doctrine.

"Here you have people in their home, asleep, and a woman wakes up to find a strange man at the foot of her bed," he said. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that he means to do you harm."

Bakkedahl said the Castle Doctrine, from the phrase: "A man's home is his castle," has origins in common law, "back when there were actually castles. You've never had to retreat from an intruder in your home when it comes to protecting yourself and your family."

Legislation enacted in Florida in October 2005 broadened the doctrine, Bakkedahl said, to include intrusions into an occupied vehicle and doing away with the "duty-to-retreat" principle.

"Let's say you're standing in the parking lot at Wal-Mart and you're attacked," Bakkedahl said. "The old law said you had to retreat from the attack until your back was up against the wall. You no longer have that duty. Even outside your 'castle,' you have the right to meet force with force, including deadly force."