An Oklahoma principal has been praised for preventing a tragedy at his high school by charging and disarming a former student armed with two semi-automatic handguns, an episode captured on dramatic surveillance video.

Kirk Moore, principal of Pauls Valley high school, was shot in the leg as he wrestled the attacker, a 20-year-old said by court documents to be obsessed with the 1999 shooting at Colorado’s Columbine high school in which 12 students and one teacher were killed.

Authorities in Garvin county, about 60 miles south of Oklahoma City, said Moore’s action of racing from his office in the school’s lobby, and throwing himself on top of the suspect, undoubtedly prevented a tragedy.

“It doesn’t surprise me the actions that he took, but it is amazing, the actions that he took,” Don May, chief of the Pauls Valley police department, told NBC News.

“There’s not a doubt in my mind that he saved kids’ lives.”