PASADENA, Texas -- Ever since the public heard his voice on that infamous 911 call last November, Joe Horn has kept quiet about what happened near his home on Timberline Drive.

That is, until now.

The retired grandfather told his side of the story Wednesday, giving a first-hand account of day he shot and killed two men suspected of burglarizing his neighbor’s home.

Horn talked to AM 740 KTRH talk show host Michael Berry Wednesday afternoon. In the 20-minute interview, Horn said he regretted killing the two men, adding that under similar circumstances he would never do it again.

“People are dead. It’s awful. It’s awful that it had to come to something like that,” Horn said during the interview by phone. “You would not want to be in these shoes. I had a genuine mental and physical collapse over this.”

Horn said even he was surprised that a grand jury decided not to indict him for criminal charges for shooting the two men.

“Why did you think you’d be indicted?” Berry asked.

“All the publicity. I thought the district attorney would be forced to do something, but I was surprised,” said Horn.

Horn said he also now lives in fear.

“I try to be careful as possible. I look before I go to my vehicle. Any place I go, I look to see if people are following me,” said Horn. “There have been threats. Death threats. So, I am trying to be as vigilant as I know how.”

As Horn was telling his side of the story, the fiancé of one of the men he killed was telling 11 News that she plans to file a civil lawsuit against Horn.

“I want him to know he just can’t go and shoot people freely without any consequences,” said Stephanie Storey, the fiancé of Hernando Torres.

The vast majority of those who called in to Berry’s talk show were fully behind Horn. And so many people were e-mailing comments that the radio station’s computer crashed.

“He stood for something that’s a god-given right,” said one caller.

But not all were in Horn’s corner.

“You did not ask Joe Horn why he shot the guy in the back,” a caller complained to Berry, indicating that the debate on this story is far from over.

Earlier in the day, in a national interview on “Good Morning America,” Horn said that “No one wants to feel like I feel.”

“To be in a situation where you have to take two lives to save your own, you have no idea what that does to you,” Horn said.

It also affected an entire community.

Angry protests pitted Horn’s vocal supporters against those who thought what he did was wrong. A police dispatcher repeatedly urged him not to go outside, but Horn said after he saw the men leaving his neighbor’s home, he just couldn’t stand by and watch.

“I didn’t go outside to engage anybody. I just went outside to help get information for the police,” Horn said.

But instead of information, there was confrontation – followed by gunfire.

“When you’re confronted, and when somebody rushes you and you’ve already told them not to move, you know that you must shoot or you’re gonna be dead,” Horn said.

Diego Ortiz and Torres – both illegal immigrants from Colombia – died that day.  Police believe the men were part of an organized home burglary ring.

According to autopsies, they were shot in the back.

Horn could have faced criminal charges, but on Monday a grand jury decided not to indict him.

That decision prompted an angry reaction from community activists.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Quanell X condemned the entire Harris County grand jury system.

He said the District Attorney’s office has a “racist mindset” and intentionally strikes African-Americans from grand juries.

“Those who put that grand jury together picked people that look like them, think like them,” Quanell X said.

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He said he was told the vast majority of the grand jurors were white, and that there was one minority.

The Harris County District Attorney’s office as a rule refuses to comment on the identities of grand jurors.

“I am very surprised that these two lives had no value, that someone can take the law into their own hands and shoot them like animals and get away with it.  This is not over. It’s not over by a longshot,” Storey said.

Storey had hoped to testify before the grand jury last week, but she was turned away.

In response to the verdict, Quanell X said he will lead a protest at the DA’s office at 5 p.m. on July 10.

“In less than 10 years, blacks, Hispanics and minorities will be the largest number in Harris County, and we will remember how we were treated,” Quanell X said. “So those in power, remember you got children and grandchildren too. You reap what you have sowed.”

He maintains that if a black man did the same thing Horn did, he would have received jail time.

“This was a wild and out-of-control Western-thinking, gun-toting man who saw the opportunity to be judge, jury and executioner, and Harris County let him get away with it. But we’re not going to let him get away with it,” Quanell X said.

As for Horn’s neighbors, the activist said he sympathizes with the fact that they don’t want unrest in their community, but he thinks they need to let law enforcement take care of criminals.  

“We said from day one we deplore and condemn the criminal act they were participating in, but we do not believe you use criminal behavior to solve criminal activity,” Quanell X said.  

Meanwhile, Quanell X said he is meeting with civil attorneys to discuss the next legal move.  He said he planned to lobby lawmakers to change the Castle Doctrine, which he believes is racially motivated.

The Castle Doctrine is the law that gives Texans a stronger right to defend themselves with deadly force in their homes, cars and workplaces.   

“How can you call the man who shoots two men in the back a hero,” Quanell X said.

Storey said all Horn saw was the color of Ortiz and Torres’ skin, and then he opened fire.

Horn said it all happened so fast, he thought he shot the men in their sides, rather than their backs.