A close friend of “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wachter has recalled the horrifying moment he found himself covered in his own blood after Wachter was randomly shot and killed by a trio of would-be masked car thieves in Los Angeles last weekend.
talk ABC’s “Good Morning America” Joy described the shock she felt after the gunfire rang out on Friday, and how she held Wachter as he lay dying, screaming for help.
“I still couldn’t see the wound, but I felt the blood. There was blood on my hands. So I ripped his shirt open and put a bullet in his chest,” Joy recalled.
“I was just screaming at him and trying to tell him to stay with me and that I love him and not go. That’s all I could get out of me at that moment.”
“I felt completely helpless. I felt like there was nothing I could do except try to give him support,” she added.
Wachter, 37, was fatally shot in the chest early Sunday morning in downtown Los Angeles after he approached a friend and bar co-worker, Anita Joy, and three suspects who were trying to steal a catalytic converter from his car.
The two were walking to their cars after finishing their bartending shifts around 3:30 a.m. when police say they saw the suspect tampering with Wachter’s vehicle.
“The guy was on his knees, he put the jack under the car and he lifted it halfway up and then we realised it wasn’t just two people,” Joy said. “He had a balaclava on and we all suddenly thought, ‘Oh no, this is bad.'”
Joy said Wachter tried to protect her by carefully approaching the gunmen, who then opened fire at close range.
“He took a step forward and I heard a loud bang,” Joy said. “He turned around and came flying towards me.”
A security guard at the bar heard Joy’s cries for help, called 911 and rushed to the scene.
The suspects, who fled in a black sedan, remain on the run.
“I hope they feel scared and I hope we can find them somehow,” Joy said of the perpetrators.
“They didn’t even get a catalytic converter, that was their goal, they just took Johnny’s life.”
