Johnny Wactor died last weekend after being shot while protecting his co-worker. Now, his co-worker is coming forward to talk about the actor’s last moments.
This is such a heartbreaking incident. Keep reading to know more about what has happened.
Anita Joy is talking about her beloved friend Johnny Wactor’s final moments. Joy was a bartender at Level 8 nightclub with the late actor and was with him when he was fatally shot. He was 37 years old at the time of his death.
The tragic incident occurred in the early hours of Saturday, May 25th last week. Joy and Wactor were done with their shift on Friday night at the club in downtown L.A. The two of them were accompanied by two other people as they were walking to their cars in a group.
“It’s mostly men on our bar staff. There’s me and a couple of other ladies that are bartenders, but mostly guys, big strong guys,” Joy said about the night. “We’re all very adamant that nobody walks out alone. We’re veteran bartenders, we’ve been doing this for a long time, we know the risks… We always, always took care of each other that way.”
When they got to the corner of the street, Joy and Wactor split from the rest of the group as their cars were parked in a different direction.
“As we’re walking up, everything is dark. There’s not really a lot of lighting there. There are big trees and stuff covering everything,” Joy recalled. “We’re just shooting the s**t, talking and having fun. As we walk up to the back of my car, I’m like, ‘OK this is me.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I’m right in front of you.’ We parked at different times, so it was very random that he was directly in front of me.”
It was then that the two of them saw three men and realized something was not right. She recalled that Wactor put his hand in front of her, indicating that she should stay back.
“He’s a protector,” Joy said of her friend of eight years. “… He genuinely just cared about me. He would’ve done that with anyone, [even] if he didn’t know them.”
The two of them first thought their car was being towed.
“He walked down onto the street between the two cars, and as we see over his car, there’s a man down there and he has a big jack and all the sudden, we were like, ‘Oh, this is not [getting] towed,'” she recalled. “… Johnny was directly in front of me and he’s like, ‘Man, this is my car. What are you doing?’ I think we startled him as much as they startled us. They kind of scrambled. I was right behind Johnny to the left a little bit and he had both hands up.”
“He stepped forward — not confronting the guy, not having fists, he had his hands up to his sides, open palms — and he’s like, ‘Hey, man,'” Joy recalled. “I was like looking down for a second and I hear a crack and the guy just shot him. They all jumped into the car and they took off. It was just instantaneous… The guy easily could of just jumped back into the car and sped off or shoved Johnny or something, but they just shot him close contact.”
After that Wactor fell backward onto Joy, she said, “tumbling with his whole bodyweight.”
“He turns me around and we both go toppling towards the ground. As I turn and grab him, I was like, ‘Honey, are you OK?’ ‘Cause I didn’t hear a fight. I don’t think there were any words exchanged from their side. He went, ‘Nope, shot,'” she remembered. “… There’s no time to think during this, but I wasn’t feeling like, ‘Oh my God, my friend is dying.’ This was like, ‘OK, he got shot, what’s next?’ I was thinking [he was shot in] maybe a leg or arm.”
When she unbuttoned his shirt she “noticed the blood.”
“I am holding him and screaming my head off for help, because there’s no one else around, the streets are bare,” she said. “Then a security from my work was crossing the street at the same time to come to his car and he came running over immediately calling 911. I had a long denim jacket, so we took that off and we wrapped it around him and tied it around the wound to try to stop the bleeding and then [the security guard] tried CPR on him.”
Throughout this ordeal Joy said that Wactor “was just very limp” after he said his last words which were, “Nope, shot.”
“He was just kind of flickering in and out of consciousness, but he kept making big gasps,” she said. “… I was screaming at him, like, ‘Johnny, stay with me! Johnny, stay with me!’… He was just kind of gurgling… I was screaming at him to stay with me and that I love him and just begging him [to stay with me]. Those were my final words to him.”
In the wake of her friend’s passing, Joy says she has been dealing with an “incredible amount of anger.”
“That’s something that I have been battling as far as my rollercoaster of what I’m feeling… because there’s no need for him to be shot. He could have been shoved or kicked or pushed away for them to get out of there, but these men went out there with a loaded gun at their disposal, right by their side ready to go,” she said. “… They had the full intention of going and getting this $350 car part, whatever it is, stealing that from someone, and then being able to shoot them if they think necessary… There’s a really, really dark place for people like that.”
Joy is heartbroken because she considered the General Hospital star, who appeared on the show as Brando Corbin, to be “literally one of the best men I’ve ever met in my life.”
“I just love him dearly and everyone did. I’m just grateful for him. He was such a goofy, kind person and made everybody feel loved by him and seen by him,” she said. “… He just wanted so many good things for everyone all the time. There wasn’t a negative bone in his body… He was just so kind; kindness just oozed out of him. He made everybody feel so good. It just came naturally to him, that was his character.”
This is such a senseless tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Johnny Wactor’s friends, family, and fans as they deal with this heartbreaking tragedy. Share this with other fans who might want to know more about his passing.
