A Dallas mother leaped into action as a man tried to drive away in her SUV with her two young children. The suspected carjacker, Ricky Wright, 36, is hospitalized after he was shot by an area mom who says he drove off with her kids and refused to stop.

The incident unfolded, according to the Dallas Morning News, at around 10 p.m. Wednesday, when a Shell gas station employee alerted the mother, identified as Michelle Booker-Hicks, that a man was attempting to get into her vehicle. Inside was her children, age 2 and 4. Booker-Hicks, who told Fox 4 she had only started carrying a 9mm pistol in her glove compartment this week, jumped into the vehicle and after the man began trying to drive away, retrieved the gun and shot him in the face. The wounded man crashed the SUV into a nearby fence then staggered away and collapsed.

“I should have emptied the whole clip but I didn’t,” Booker-Hicks told CBS-DFW. “I’m not a killer or anything like that, but I do believe in defending what’s mine.”

Wright, hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, was booked on two counts of unlawful restraint and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

The incident was praised by the National Rifle Association on social media as an example of an armed citizen with the hashtag #2A, saying, “A mom’s number one job is to protect her family.”