Matthew Horn was relaxing at a buddy's house, catching up and cracking jokes with their friend's livestream on in the background when all hell broke loose online.

Twitch streamer Jayden Samuel, better known as Aesdr, was hosting a gathering at his expansive house in Tarzana, in the Los Angeles valley, on April 18.

Suddenly, the laughter and teenage hijinks fell silent as loud banging echoed and hooded strangers stood menacingly in the darkened entry hall.

The home invaders had smashed their way inside Aesdr's home about 2am, breaking the gate and forcing the back door open, and were demanding thousands of dollars.

Horn, 37, watched as the situation got more and more heated, and realized the group was carrying guns and his friends were in danger.

The disabled US Navy veteran jumped in his car and drove to the house armed with only a can of bear spray and his wits.

'Jayden, he's like my little brother, I'd never let anything happen to him. I had to do something,' Horn told the Daily Mail.

Aesdr and his friends, looking down on the intruders from the top of the stairs, tried to negotiate for more than half an hour but they refused to leave.

'You're gonna kill us or something? For $2,500?' Aesdr asked, later claiming to the Daily Mail that the group threatened their lives.

Seconds later, Horn burst through the front door and stormed into the room warning the invader he was ex-military and demanding they leave.

The group retreated towards the door as Horn held the can of bear spray in front of him, before a quick succession of gunshots rang out.

Horn collapsed in a pool of blood as the stream was cut off amid panicked screams. 

'I remember the bullets hitting me, then I put my hand over my chest,' he told the Daily Mail.

Horn was shot six times as the home invaders opened fire, spraying bullets across the room and narrowly missing Aesdr and his friends.

Three of the bullets hit his chest, one of them blocked by the bear spray can and ricocheting sideways through his torso.

'It was like you have an elephant sitting on your chest… the weight and heaviness, of something being there collapsing your lungs,' Horn continued.

He instinctively turned after the first three shots, and was hit twice more in the back and once in his left buttock.

Once the shooters fled, Aesdr and two of his friends ran to Horn's aid and tried to staunch the bleeding with their hands.

He thought he was going to die and revealed: 'I said, God forgive me for all my sins, and I forgive everybody, including the shooter.

'They were trying to keep me awake, making me count backwards. I waited for what seemed like forever until the police dragged me out of there.'

Aesdr, who was halfway down the stairs when the shooting began, believes the first shot was aimed at him before the attackers turned their attention to Horn.

'That first bullet, it was for me. It was two inches away from me, it would have hit me in my pelvis and I would have died,' he said.

'Matthew saved all our lives. He's a hero, we might all be dead if he didn't come.'

Aesdr said police took 30 minutes to arrive and an ambulance took another half an hour after that to show up.

'So Matthew was on the floor for an hour and he survived,' Aesdr said.

Horn was in surgery for four to five hours at Northridge Hospital and still has a bullet lodged in his chest that is too dangerous to remove. 

'One of the bullets bounced off my sternum and went through my liver, stomach, and spleen. It's still there, close to my heart,' he said.

'The doctors said if it was a half inch to the left, it would have hit my heart and I would have died.'

Horn also has bullet fragments in his left upper arm, causing nerve damage that partially paralyzed his left hand.

'They said they don't know how much movement I will get back, but I'm trying every day to improve it,' he said.

Another bullet broke his right hip and left fragments in his leg, with other fragments in his back and a fractured rib making it difficult to breathe. 

Surgeons had to cut all the way along his chest from his sternum to his pelvis, leaving a grisly wound held together with dozens of staples.

Horn stayed in hospital for 13 days before he was sent home, but was then later rushed to UCLA Medical Center when he had severe chest pains.

'I had over 200ml of blood and liquid in my lungs, and they said if I had waited one more day, I would have died,' he said.

Horn is now back home after five more days in hospital, but faces a long and painful recovery. 

The veteran sailor reflected on how he made it through deployments to a dozen countries without a scratch in his four years of active service, only to almost die back home in the US.

His service in 2009 to 2013 included capturing Somali pirates, a tsunami off the coast of Japan, and saving five people from drowning including fellow sailors and a little girl at a wedding.

'I know God still wants me here on Earth because that's the bullets, the heart attack, the blood in my lungs, and a 103F fever that happened to me,' he said.

'I'm making it, but it's breaking me down. I'm just trying not to give up. I watch all these videos of everybody else out living life and I'm still here fighting to walk around my house.'

The shooting has also left him with terrifying dreams every night.

'The nightmares are horrible. I walk around with bullets all in my body and I'm talking to people but I have these big holes all through me,' he said.

Aesdr is also deeply traumatized by the shooting and took a two week break from streaming. When he finally returned, he broke down sobbing for several minutes.

'I definitely felt like I was the one who should have got shot. Matthew took a bullet for me,' he said.

'The three girls who were in the house, they have PTSD, I have PTSD. I get scared when an unknown car comes by the house because we don't know if we're getting targeted now.'

Aesdr's housemate Andrew explained the shooting stemmed from a business deal gone wrong.

'This guy hit us up through Instagram asking if he could host, he wasn't saying a party, he said a small event at our house, and we said, sure, go ahead,' he said.

Instead, more than 100 rowdy people showed up outside the house and they called the police to shut it down.

They soon discovered the man who contacted them was a middleman for the party hosts and lied to them about the nature of the event.

'We had no idea who these guys were, but they were angry and he told them who we were, so they came looking for their money,' Andrew said.

'All the people in our house, we're all like gamers or streamers, we're internet kids. We're like a bunch of nerds, we're not really used to this type of thing.' 

The pair tried to explain the situation after the intruders broke in, and offered to pay them half the money back as the rest was already spent on cleaners and assistants who got the house ready for the event.

'But they said, no, we want the full thing or we're gonna come back and kill you guys,' Aesdr claimed they said.

Aesdr and his Twitch followers identified who they believed was involved in the shooting, but it was four days before an arrest was made.

Sean Charles Strong - a wannabe rapper known as YoungBigBro - was arrested on April 22 and charged with attempted murder the next day.

He pleaded not guilty and is in custody on a $2 million bond.

No one else appears to have been charged over the shooting, but at least some of the suspects are believed to be minors whose cases would be sealed.

Aesdr and his friends started a fundraiser to pay for Horn's $11,000 in out of pocket medical bills.