A United States Air Force veteran and father of four children, who met his wife Jessica in elementary school and took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom, was killed early Sunday morning at a Memphis, Tennessee IHOP. He was trying to break up a fight.

The former airman, Devin Wilson, was just 27 years old.

A beloved and devoted dad, his wife says his kids were absolutely everything to him.

“They’re asking for their daddy, they’re calling for their daddy, and there’s nothing I can tell them besides he loved them,” she said to WMC Action News 5 in Memphis.

More on the tragic and what exactly happened from the local news station:

Witnesses said he and a security guard tried to break up an argument between a man and his ex-girlfriend. The ex-boyfriend pulled out a gun and shot the security guard and Wilson.

Police said Wilson jumped in to stop the fight after the ex-boyfriend allegedly choked the woman. Wilson was shot in the head and the security guard was shot in the arm.

Wilson died in the hospital. The security guard was taken to the hospital in non-critical condition.

Wilson’s mother, who had to turn off the life support machine at the hospital and say goodbye to her son on Mother Day’s, says she wasn’t surprised that he acted in the heroic way that he did.

“We have to do something, you just can’t stand by and let that happen. That was Devin,” she said.

Service was not only in his past, but it was in his future, too — a future that was robbed by a shooter at a breakfast place in the wee hours of a weekend morning.

The vet hoped to open up a community center for children in his Whitehaven neighborhood.

No one has been arrested in the ongoing police investigation.