Ada, Okla. — The mother of three-month-old twins who witnessed the father’s attempt to drown them in a bathtub before he was shot dead by a neighbor described the chaotic scene Monday.

Michelle Sorrells, 30, said she was seriously battered by Leland Foster, 27, when trying to prevent him from killing their twin boy and girl, nearly losing consciousness before the neighbor showed up mid-day Friday.

Cash Freeman, who lives next door, arrived on the scene minutes after being alerted to the father’s intent by Sorrells’ 12-year-old niece, who escaped the scene and ran to Freeman’s home crying for help.

Armed with a loaded revolver, he heard a woman’s screams from a bathroom, saw Foster trying to hold the babies under water in the tub, and shot him twice in the back. She said it it wasn’t for Freeman, the boy and girl twins would have been murdered.

Sorrells, from Antlers, Oklahoma, said in an interview with the Ada News she was staying at her mother and stepfather’s home in Ada since separating a week earlier from Foster after he smacked one of the twins. She said she had known him for three years and he had never before displayed such behavior.

She said Foster showed up at the home around 12:30 p.m. She refused to allow him in to see the children, told him he was no longer welcome and to get medical help.

“He turned around to leave and he was dead calm,” recalled Sorrells. “So I turned my back on him to unlock the door. But as soon as I opened the door he tackled me and forced his way into the house.”

Sorrells said Foster grabbed the twins from their beds in the living room, knocked her violently into a space heater and headed into the bathroom, turning on the water in the tub.

She said Foster left the bathroom momentarily to go to the kitchen, allowing her and the niece to run into the bathroom and try to lock the door, but he return quickly, knocked them both down and brandished a knife.

“He started choking me,” said Sorrells. “I begged him to stop. I begged him not to hurt our babies.”

He replied, she said, that “it was too late for that now. I can’t see them (the babies) anymore so you’re all going to go.”

Sorrells told her niece to call 911. She did that and also ran next door to alert Cashman, a decision that police said saved the lives of the twin babies.

Sorrells, hurting from what turned out to be broken back, managed to grab her son from the bathtub but Foster “ripped him out of my arms and literally threw him back in the tub, face down,” then began choking her again to the point where she nearly passed out, eventually pushing her down and sitting on her.

“That’s when I heard two shots ring out,” said Sorrells. “He yelled, ‘Oh,’ and I shoved him off of me and grabbed my babies. He dropped and twitched one time on the floor and then went still.”

The next thing she remembers, said Sorrells, was the neighbor looking down at her, and asking if she and the babies were okay?

“I was screaming, ‘my babies, my babies,’” she said.

Sorrells said she suffered three fractured vertebrae in her back, a broken foot and multiple bruises. She was treated at a local hospital.

Both of the babies were hospitalized overnight with slight skull fractures, but Sorrells said doctors assured her they will be okay as their heads are still in the formative stage.

Lisa Bratcher, the city’s public information director, said police are not pursuing charges against the neighbor for the shooting death. He was being praised as a hero all day on the internet.

Sorrells said she was surprised by Foster’s violent conduct, saying he appeared to snap when she told him he could not see her or the babies again.

“I wholeheartedly believe he panicked and couldn’t see any way out,” she said. “He was a good person. He just snapped. He had a good family. They’re just as shocked as I am.”

Details for this story were provided by the Ada, Oklahoma News.