Durant girl, 12, talks about shooting home intruder

“I had to do what I had to do,” Kendra St. Clair said Friday. “I was scared out of my mind.”

Kendra used her mother's handgun to shoot the intruder Wednesday while she was home on fall break. Her mother had shown her how to shoot it, she said.

“Normally I do not leave my kids at home alone,” Debra St. Clair said. “But being a single mother of two with a full-time job, I had to that day.”

Her son attends a different school, which was not on fall break.

St. Clair said they are all still in shock, but commended her daughter's strength.

“She's a trooper,” she said. “She's staying strong and confident. She's handling this much better than I would have.”

Kendra said even though she was terrified, “I kept my head on straight.”

Stacey Adam Jones, 32, was booked into the Bryan County jail Thursday. Bail was set at $250,000 at Jones' arraignment hearing Friday afternoon, assistant Bryan County District Attorney Tim Webster said. His next court appearance will be a preliminary hearing conference in December.

Kendra, a sixth-grader at Calera Elementary, called her mother about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to say a man was ringing the doorbell and banging on the door, St. Clair said.

“She said he was continuously ringing the doorbell and when no one answered he opened the screen door and started banging on the door,” St. Clair said. “She told me she didn't know where he had gone after that.”

St. Clair told her daughter to get her .40-caliber Glock pistol and go into the bathroom closet, which has reinforced locks on the door.