By Joanna Putman
Police1
LEWISTON, Maine — A bar manager at one of the sites targeted in the Lewiston mass shooting was shot as he ran toward the shooter with a butcher knife, his father told NBC News 10.
Leroy Walker, a city councilor for the town of Auburn, was not at the bar at the time of the shooting but had been told that his son, Joe, was shot twice in the stomach while trying to stop the shooter.
“He died a hero,” Walker said.
Walker told NBC that he and his family had to wait nearly 14 hours for news of his son’s fate.
He described the feeling of waiting for confirmation of Joe’s death: “And I don’t know, telling you the truth, what kind of night this is going to be from now until tomorrow when I wake up to the true facts that my son is dead – and I know he’s dead. I know it as well as I know I’m standing here telling you because he’s not here and he’s not at any other hospital and he’s not running the streets or he would have called us because he manages Schemengees, so I know he was there.”
Late Thursday morning, Walker confirmed to NBC News that state police told him his son was killed.