Dallas, TX – A Texas mother shot a man in the head after he tried to steal her SUV with her two tiny children in the back seat.

Michelle Booker-Hicks said she had gone inside the Shell gas station on Camp Wisdom Road to pay for gas at about 10 p.m. on July 4 when the 36-year-old Rickey Wright jumped in her vehicle and tried to drive away with her two- and four-year-old sons, according to KTVT-TV.

Booker-Hicks saw Wright driving away in her car and jumped into the back seat to stop him.

The mother said she tried to get Wright to stop the car, but he refused.

“I proceeded to jump in my backseat and told the gentleman to stop, to get out the car. He would not get out of the car. He turned around and looked at me. I reached over the armrest to get my glove compartment and that’s when I fired at him once I got the gun from my glove compartment,” Booker-Hicks told KDFW.

Wright crashed the SUV into a light pole after he was shot in the head, and was later taken to a local hospital. He was taken to the hospital where he was listed in critical condition, according to KDFW.

Booker-Hicks said she had a message for Wright: “I wish I would’ve killed you, if I didn’t already.”

“I should have just have emptied the whole clip but I didn’t. I didn’t. I just wanted to give him a warning shot that was it,” Booker-Hicks said, according to KTVT.

Booker-Hicks said she had just put the gun in the car a few hours earlier after her husband helped her reload it, according to KTVT.

“I told him that I needed some bullets for my gun and he told me that he was going to go get it,” Booker-Hicks told KTVT.

Police questioned the protective mother at the scene and released her. Neither Booker-Hicks, nor either of her little boys, was injured during the incident, police said.

“I’m not a killer or anything like that, but I do believe in defending what’s mine,” the mother said. “I hope that woke him up.”

Wright has been charged with two counts of unlawful restraint for the attempted kidnapping, and unauthorized use of motor vehicle for the carjacking, according to KDFW.

Court records showed that Wright has been arrested more than 20 times on charges that included unauthorized use of a vehicle, possession of marijuana, evading arrest, assault, and theft, according to KTVT.