Wichita ? A woman who died after a car crash had been shot in the heart minutes earlier with a pellet gun that her 14-year-old son had gotten as a Christmas gift from his grandfather, police said Wednesday.

Police said the teen was protecting the grandfather when he fired the air rifle Tuesday afternoon at Elizabeth White, 41, of Salina. The death has been ruled a justifiable homicide, said Capt. Randy Landen, of the Wichita Police Department.

Police said the altercation happened after White arrived at the home where her 73-year-old father and her 68-year-old mother were raising her two teenage sons. Armed with scissors, White threatened to kill her father, who had only a cane to defend himself. His wife grabbed a kitchen knife to defend herself.

When the argument moved into the front yard, Landen said the woman’s son fired the pellet gun in self-defense.

White then took off in a car, but she crashed a short time later near a Wichita middle school after striking several poles and a parked sport utility vehicle.

Sedgwick County paramedics pulled her from the burning vehicle, which had come to rest in a yard after jumping a curb. She was pronounced dead at a Wichita hospital.