Man killed protecting elderly couple from robbers

NASHVILLE, TN - A Nashville community is mourning the loss of a popular maintenance worker. Shot and killed while protecting an elderly couple from robbers.

"All he was doing is protecting an elderly person...and they shot him," Father Norman Jacobs says

Police say Anthony Jacobs rushed to a mobile home when he heard that robbers had barged into a couple's house. Jacobs lives here and is also the maintenance man of these homes on Dickerson Pike.

His wife says she saw three men in bandanas with assault weapons, ran to call 911 but told her husband on the way about the robbery.

That's when Jacob's confronted the men and ended up dead.

"To me, it makes me feel like he's a hero. Now I know I have a hero in my family," Cousin Cody Jacobs says.

Jerry Jordan, neighbor of Anthony Jacobs, says "He is a good person. He's a good person, man."

His family says the 30-year-old loved children--Even drove an ice cream truck and every year, he helped out with haunted houses.

Norman Jacobs says, "These young thugs, being whoever they were, why can't they just get a job? There's no need to shoot anybody. They could've just left."

The robbers left, only after leaving a devastated family behind.