The recording of a 911 call made during a home invasion in Georgia reveals a chilling scene in which a husband coaches his wife -- home alone with her twin 9-year-old children -- to shoot a determined intruder.

The intruder used a crowbar to bust into the house last Friday and at first intended to rob the suburban Atlanta home in Loganville but shifted his focus to hunting down Melinda Herman and her son and daughter, Walton County investigators told NBC station WXIA in Atlanta.

The family had fled through three locked doors, into a bathroom and then to an upstairs crawl space, but the intruder busted the doors open to stalk the family, police said.

As the incident transpired, husband Donnie Herman was in Atlanta and had his wife on one phone line and the 911 operator on the other, according to the recording, obtained by WXIA and the Atlanta Journal- Constitution.

“Do you hear him? Is he in the house? He’s in the house,” Donnie Herman says.

“Melinda, if he opens that door, you shoot him, you understand.”

“She has a weapon?” asks the dispatcher. “What type of weapon?”

“She has a .38,” Donnie Herman said.

The 911 operator tells him that officers were on the way.

“She shot him. She’s shooting him, she’s shooting him.”

"OK," the dispatcher responds.

"Shoot him again! Shoot him!" Donnie Herman yells, later telling the dispatcher “She shot him, a lot.”

Herman tells the dispatcher he heard a lot of screaming. But it was seven agonizing minutes before he found out that his family was OK, WXIA reported.

Melinda Herman told police that she started shooting when the man opened the door to the crawl space. He pleaded with her to stop, but she kept firing until she was out of bullets, she told police. She then fled to a neighbor's house with her children. 

The family is still shaken by what happened.

"Just like I told her that night,” Walton County Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Hall told WXIA. “Ya know, there's right and there's wrong and then there's not natural, and it's not natural for people to have to shoot people, so it is going to bother you ..."

The National Rifle Association tweeted a link about the shooting, apparently using it as an example of responsible gun ownership.

And Sheriff Joe Chapman  told The Associated Press that he was proud of the way she handled the incident.

"This lady decided that she wasn't going to be a victim, and I think everyone else looks at this and hopes they have the courage to do what she done," Chapman said Wednesday.

The alleged intruder, identified as Paul Slater, 32, of Atlanta,  was shot five times. He remained at a hospital. 

Spokesmen for the Sheriff’s Office and the Walton County prosecutors were not immediately available to NBC News.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The former butler who injected a Kent socialite with what he claimed was a lethal virus, then demanded $8.5 million for an antidote has been sentenced to 20 years.

Before being sentenced, Emanuel Nicolescu proclaimed his innocence and asked the judge to be merciful. 

The crime he was sentenced for happened on April 15, 2007, when Nicolescu and two others broke into Anne Bass' stately home and held her hostage for about six hours.

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He had served as Bass' butler until he was fired in 2006 after using one of her vehicles for an unauthorized personal trip and crashing it.

Bass, 70, testified during the trial and said she was headed to her kitchen when she heard "war cries" and saw three men in black hoods and clothes, carrying guns and knives.

"In my memory, I just see them almost like they were in some military formation," Bass testified.

She said she pulled the kitchen door closed, but the men grabbed her and shoved her to the floor in her living room.

"I was asking them what they wanted," Bass said. "They just told me to shut up."

Bass said she also heard them restrain her companion, Julian Lethbridge.

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Then they took them to Bass' upstairs bathroom, where they held them, bound and blindfolded, for most of a six-hour ordeal.

At one point, they heard loud snaps and clicks. 

"I thought they were about to blow the house up. I was sure we were going to die," Bass said.

Then, Bass described the injections she and Lethbridge received. 

One of the captors cut the sleeve of her bathrobe, cleaned off her shoulder with an alcohol wipe and then stuck a needle into her arm, Bass said. 

"It was excruciating," she said.

They said it as a lethal virus and demanded $8.5 million for an antidote.

"It all seemed really strange," said Bass. "An antidote is for poison, not a virus. It didn't make any sense."

Bass, in tears, said she spent a lot of time thinking about her two children and "how horrible this would be for them because I was sure I was going to die." 

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Bass also said she feared her 3-year-old grandson would also die. He was sleeping in a room nearby.  "I just didn't see how anyone could survive something like that," she said.

Toward the end of the ordeal, Bass described what has become a recurring nightmare for her.  She said, "I felt like someone was just staring at me with these piercing blue eyes."

The defense claimed Nicolescu had nothing to do with either planning or carrying out the crime. 

They challenged Bass' testimony about seeing a suspect with blue eyes and said such details appeared nowhere in her statements to police.

Bass said she told police several times about the recollection.

Eventually, the captors drugged Bass and Lethbridge. When they slept, the captors left the estate in one of Bass' Jeeps.

When Bass woke up, she was able to free herself and Lethbridge. Her grandson was unharmed.

Nicolescu was charged with attempted extortion and other offenses and found guilty in March.

He could have been sentenced to up to 50 years in federal prison, but he was sentenced to 20 years on count 1, 20 on count 2, and 10 on count 3, to be served concurrently.

Prosecutors previously said DNA evidence linked him to the stolen Jeep that Bass purchased after Nicolescu was fired from his job.

Nicolescu's attorneys said they are disappointed and will file motions and argued that the government did not have sufficient evidence.

Lawyers for the defense said the don't think Nicolescu will be the last person to be tried for the crime.

During sentencing proceedings on Friday, there was a recess so Nicolescu could review a sentencing agreement, which he had not done earlier.

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