The lady's got a gun.

A 66-year-old woman flushed out a criminal from inside her house and put a load of lead in him as he flew out the door.

In the hour before midnight on Tuesday, November 8, police chased a man speeding in a truck in Arlington, Texas. The driver of the truck, later identified as Christopher Lessner, eluded police when he jumped from the moving truck and fled on foot. Police scoured the neighborhood for more than an hour, but couldn't find him, reported the Arlington Star-Telegram.

Unbeknownst to the police, Lessner had gotten out of the immediate vicinity and had broken into the home of Susan Buxton to hide. At 12:45, Buxton got out of bed to let a puppy outside, and she noticed muddy footprints on her porch. She became suspicious that someone might have broken into her house.

Back inside, she became even more suspicious as she conferred with her 28-year-old granddaughter, Mandy Davis. Davis had awakened because she heard banging on a second-story window and then what sounded like glass breaking.

Then Buxton noticed a door ajar and items displaced. She already had a gun in hand, one that she used to stop marauding coyotes from attacking her dogs when she let them outside. She and Davis began to search the house. When they opened the coat closet, they found Lessner. He pleaded briefly with them to not make a scene, and then he burst out of the closet. He was a tall, athletically built, bald, tattooed, and shirtless man. Buxton told Lessner to lie prone on the ground, and her granddaughter ran to call 911. Lessner didn't listen to Buxton's command, and he grabbed for her gun as he tried to escape out the front door of the house.

Buxton aimed and shot Lessner in the leg, ignoring the training that she had learned in gun instruction classes where she was taught to shoot at the center mass of a criminal. Lessner briefly flopped down on Buxton's front lawn before making another try for freedom. Buxton shot at him one more time, but missed. Lessner fled into the darkness behind her house.

Police later caught Lessner a few houses away, cowering on a neighbor's balcony. Lessner will be charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle because he was driving a stolen truck, evading arrest, criminal mischief, and criminal trespass.

Buxton will not be charged in the incident.