LOS ANGELES — The woman who Johnny Wactor died protecting has spoken out about the deadly shooting.
Anita Joy was a co-worker with whom Wactor was walking with when the pair came across someone trying to steal a catalytic converter from the “General Hospital” actor’s car, Entertainment Tonight reported.
They had just left work at Level 8 nightclub on Saturday. Wactor worked at the club as a bartender.
“I’ve needed to take some time to collect myself and my thoughts,” Joy wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “I was with Johnny in his last moments and I’m here to be his voice after such unimaginable events.”
She called the alleged shooter, who has not been captured, “a coward who reacted without care of the gorgeous life he was taking.”
“My friend of 8 years went from laughing together, working side by side, leaving our bartending shift and walking to our cars, to him dying in my arms in the streets of DTLA in the dark hours of 3am,” she wrote. “Basic details of this horrific story which comes down to a few criminals trying to steal a car part.”
She said that she and Wactor thought the car was being towed, so they asked the men what they were doing.
Joy wrote, “Johnny was between me and the man who shot him - as I heard the shot ring into the night, he forcefully tumbled back into my arms and as I grabbed for him, I shouted, ‘Hunny you ok?!’ And he only responded, ‘Nope! Shot!’”
A security guard from the nightclub came running and called 911. While they waited for an ambulance, the security guard tried to perform CPR on Wactor.
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Corner said Wactor died from a gunshot wound to the chest and the manner of death was homicide, People magazine reported.
Wactor, in addition to appearing as Brando Corbin in 164 episodes of “General Hospital,” he also appeared in “Army Wives,” “Westworld” and “NCIS,” among dozens of other television shows.
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