Anaheim Police Investigate Fatal Shooting Near Bar : Crime: Richard Kolacz was slain after brandishing a gun to rescue his son from a beating, police say.

A Garden Grove man was shot and killed late Sunday night after brandishing a gun in an attempt to rescue his 25-year-old son following a fight with motorcycle group members outside a bar, police said Monday.

Richard Frederick Kolacz, 56, was killed outside the Linbrook Inn in the 2100 block of Lincoln Avenue after he brandished the gun and yelled at several men standing in a parking lot where he had been summoned by his son, Stan Kolacz, police said.

David Kolacz, another of the victim’s sons, said he understood that his father had helped Stan Kolacz escape from two men who were beating him outside the bar and was shot as he and Stan Kolacz were running to their car.

Police said they could not confirm David Kolacz’s version of the events.

Stan Kolacz had called his father after 11 p.m. asking for a ride home after several men harassed him in the bar, knocking off his glasses, according Geri Symons, the victim’s girlfriend. Stan Kolacz called again 10 minutes later to say the men were pursuing him after he returned to the bar for his glasses.

Police said Kolacz was shot twice in the upper torso around 11:25 p.m. Sunday, and was declared dead at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. Police would not disclose any information about possible suspects.

Richard Kolacz “was such a passive, quiet person,” who was devoted to his son, David, 23, who is blind and lives at home, as well as a 23-year-old daughter, Katheryn, who lives in Albuquerque, N.M., and a 25-year-old blind woman he informally adopted last year, Symons said.

“He’s really protective of his family,” she said. “I don’t know how we are going to tell [his daughter in New Mexico],” Symons said.

Symons said Richard Kolacz had retired as a computer programmer at Los Alamitos Race Track and spent most of his time helping his children. A week before the slaying, he had dropped off the woman he cares for at a school for the blind near San Francisco. She was waiting for him to return her phone call at the time he was killed.

“He’s the only who had that much confidence in me,” David Kolacz said Monday. “I just want them to put these guys away,” he said.

Symons said Kolacz did not have insurance, and she did not know how the family would cope with burial expenses.