HOLLY SPRINGS — Jeanette Mays and her family were getting ready to call it a night when their routine was disrupted by a home invasion on Monday.

Mays spoke to the Tribune on Tuesday and gave a minute-by-minute recount of the terrifying night her family went through.

The victim said she was watching television in the family room in her home on Amylou Circle while her husband and brother-in-law were upstairs in two separate rooms.

Mays said her son and his girlfriend briefly left the house to drive a friend home.

She said she then heard her son return and enter the house through the home’s garage door.

Mays said she opened the door to greet her son, and she was met with the three suspects holding her son.

“I screamed and one big guy smashed my face into the wall,” Mays said.

Mays said the men forced her, her son and his girlfriend to lie on the ground with their hands behind their back.

She said the men were yelling, “Is anyone else in the house?”

Meanwhile, Mays said her brother-in-law heard the intruders and began to dial 911 from his cellphone.

Mays said one man went upstairs and ran into her husband and brother-in law.

Her brother-in-law threw his cellphone on his bed, and he and her husband were brought downstairs, Mays said.

“They didn’t give us a chance to communicate with one another,” she said. “They kept telling us to shut up.”

Mays said the three men rummaged through the house and eventually moved the family into the pantry in the kitchen.

By that time, Mays said the doorbell rang a few times and she heard loud banging on the door.

Mays said the three men left out the back door and they were able to let the officers in.

“I’m 51 years old and I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life,” she said. “I was praying to God the whole time I was lying on the floor.”

Mays added she was impressed with the investigation work among Holly Springs Police, Woodstock Police and the Sheriff’s department to solve the crime.

“I thank God for the Holly Springs Police Department, the Woodstock Police Department and the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office,” she said. “They really worked this case. They did a fine job.”