Johnny Wactor was shot while protecting his colleague: Brother

“General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor died while protecting a colleague from armed robbers who shot him just for a catalytic converter.

Wactor, 37, was accompanying his unidentified girlfriend to her own car when he encountered the three thieves who had jacked up his car at around 3:25 a.m. Saturday, his brother Grant told the Daily Mail.

“We were born and raised in the South and would never let a woman walk to her car alone,” said the grieving brother.

“He passed them and thought his truck was being towed. So he said something to the guys like, ‘Hey, are you towing?’

“When he turned around, he saw what had happened and brought his colleague behind him. And then they shot him.”

The actor backed away and tried to protect his colleague when the men opened fire, Grant said, citing the Los Angeles police’s assessment of the crime scene.

The thieves – who were all wearing masks, according to police – fled the scene in another vehicle. They had not been identified as of Monday morning.

“We are absolutely devastated,” Wactor’s grandmother Barbara told the Daily Mail. “He was just walking to his car. It’s senseless.”

The actor’s mother, Scarlett Wactor, also told NBC News how her son stood up for his colleagues to protect them, calling him “a light in a dark room.”

“There is a huge gap in all of us and it cannot be closed,” she said.

Johnny often took on extra bartending shifts between gigs and worked longer than usual that night, his mother said. He left the bar with three coworkers, two of them going in different directions, before Wactor and the woman he was with were attacked.