Simone Morrow-Cliette never leaves her back door unlocked — and the one time she did may have saved a boy’s life.

Last Saturday night, Morrow-Cliette, 56, came downstairs to find a man she didn’t know on her kitchen floor.

“I started screaming ‘I’m gonna kill you, I’m gonna shoot you, I’m gonna mess you up,’”Morrow-Cliette told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Then he started screaming, ‘Please don’t shoot me.’ God calmed me and He said ‘look at who is talking to you.’ I just saw his mustache and thought it was a man. And when I really looked at him I saw, this (was) a kid.”

Morrow-Cliette said she received a call from her neighbor alerting her to a flurry of activity outside her house, ostensibly from people attending a party in the neighborhood.

“All of a sudden I heard a bunch of stuff falling. I thought, oh my God they just hit my car,” Morrow-Cliette said. But, when Morrow-Cliette went downstairs to check on her car, she was surprised to find someone in her kitchen.

According to Morrow-Cliette, the boy told her he was at the party in the neighborhood when several boys attacked him. Seeking safety, he ran into her house.

Morrow-Cliette allowed him to call his parents, who thanked her for the way she handled the break-in.

“I decided not to press charges,” Morrow-Cliette told Channel 2 Action News. “This was a 17 year old running for his life.”

In other news:

The man wanted for a string of violent crimes in metro Atlanta is now in jail.