STANDISH, Maine — “When I was with him, I was safe. I knew who he was. I knew he wouldn't let anyone hurt me.”
Sarah Terrano wants everyone to know about her boyfriend, Shawn Mckeough – a man she and many others consider a hero.
“It doesn't feel right to be here without him,” she said. “I don’t think it will ever feel right to be here without him.”
Mckeough was killed while trying to stop a North Little Rock convenience store robbery on Friday, March 15.
“It was such a blur; It's still such a blur,” Terrano told THV11 sister station WCHS on Wednesday.
Mckeough, 23, was a senior airman assigned to Little Rock Air Force Base. He and Terrano moved to North Little Rock in December and recently purchased a house. They wanted a backyard for their two puppies.
The couple went to dinner with friends Friday night in celebration of their anniversary. Afterward, the group took an Uber to the Big Red convenience store on West Broadway, across from Dickey Stephens Park to pick up some beer. Terrano said she and one friend stayed in the car while Shawn and two others went inside.
“All of a sudden, I see two people run across the front of the store,” Terrano said.
Those people, armed with guns, were there to rob the store, according to police.
Terrano said she saw them point their guns at the cashier and then toward her friends on the ground. Meanwhile, her boyfriend was out of sight, she said.
“And I knew right then, I was like 'if he turns around and sees them pointing that gun he's going to do something;” she said. “I knew already and I was just thinking ‘please just don't.’ And right as I was thinking that I just saw. I saw him come toward them.”
Police say Mckeough tried to restrain one suspect when the other one shot him. They both ran off as he fell to the floor, according to court documents.
“I jumped out, and I ran in, and it was it was bad,” Terrano said through tears. “It was really bad. The picture in my head re-plays over and over and over, but I had to be there for him. I had to go in. I was going to try everything I could to save him and keep him with me, but I couldn't. No one could've.”
When asked how she wants others to remember her boyfriend, Terrano said: “as a hero.”
“He saved a lot of lives that night, and I know he did it for me. He did it for our friends. He did it for all the people in there,” she said.
She says he would do it again if he could.
“I don't want people to think he's just another person because it’s not. It's not another person,” she said.
Terrano returned home to Maine this week, where she works through her grief with help from others who loved her boyfriend.
“It's comforting to know that people care, and there's people that are there for me and people that are thinking of me because I don't know how I would wake up every day with no one around me,” she said. “I couldn't go on like that. I still don't know how I'm going to go on like this.”
Terrano said she is thankful for ongoing support from the Air Force and the friends she and Mckeough made during their time at Little Rock Air Force Base.
Funeral services are pending for Mckeough in Maine. The Air Force also plans to hold a memorial for Mckeough at LRAFB in the coming weeks.