(NEW YORK) — The co-worker and friend who was with Johnny Wactor when the former “General Hospital” actor was shot and killed is speaking for the first time about the tragic night.
Anita Joy sat down with “Good Morning America” and recounted her good friend’s final moments.
“It all happened in an instant,” Joy recalled. “All of my being just kind of like dropped to my ankles.”
“This felt completely helpless. There’s nothing in my knowledge that I could have done aside from like, trying to give him support,” Joy added.
Joy and Wactor had finished their bartending shift at about 3 a.m. on May 25 in downtown Los Angeles and were walking to their cars together when police said they encountered three suspects in masks who were attempting to steal the catalytic convertor from Wactor’s car.
“A man is down like on his knees putting a jack under the car and he had the car halfway jacked up and then we realize this is not tow people,” Joy recalled. “He had a ski mask on so we were just suddenly like, ‘Oh no, you know, this is bad.'”
Wactor approached one of the suspects, who instantly opened fire on the 37-year-old, and then fled in a dark sedan, according to Joy.
“He approached the man just like one step forward and I hear a loud crack,” Joy said. “He just came flying backwards towards me.”
Joy, who opened up about what happened in an Instagram post late Wednesday, had written that when she asked Wactor if he was OK at the time, he responded, “Nope! Shot!”
Joy said she struggled to figure out how to respond.
“I was just thinking, I was like, ‘OK, shot. What’s next?'” Joy recalled. “I didn’t see the wound yet. I could feel the blood. I had blood on my hands so I ripped his shirt open and he had a shot right to his chest.”
Joy said she screamed for help and a nearby security guard called 911. She also tied her jacket around Wactor to try to stop the bleeding.
“I was just screaming at him, trying to tell him to stay with me and that I love him and don’t go. That was all that could come out of me at that moment,” Joy said.
Joy said she wanted people to know that her close friend was a selfless person who cared about others.
“He was the guy to give you the shirt off his back. He was the guy to step in front of you, if you’re gonna get shot,” Joy said. “You could be friends with him for 10 minutes. You can be friends with him for 10 years and it’s almost the same energy that he would give you.”
Nearly a week after the incident, the suspects in this case are still at large and police are seeking the public’s help to identify those behind the senseless killing.
Joy told “GMA” she hopes the suspects are “caught and convicted.”
“I hope that they’re terrified and I hope that somehow we find them,” Joy said of the suspects. “They didn’t even get the catalytic converter, that’s what they were going for. They left with Johnny’s life instead.”
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