The 35-year-old bicyclist killed in a Colorado Springs shooting rampage Saturday was a three-tour Iraq war veteran who refueled helicopters during his decade in the Army, his grandfather said.

Andrew Alan Myers, a father of two, was the first of three people killed by Noah Harpham in the apparently random attack. Witnesses said Myers pleaded before his life — yelling “Don’t shoot me! Don’t shoot me!” — before being killed.

“It’s just such a surprise,” Myers’ grandfather, Samuel Myers, told The Denver Post on Tuesday.

Two women, Jennifer Michelle Vasquez, 42, and Christina Rose Baccus-Gallela, 34, were slain by Harpham as they sat at a home for women recovering from substance abuse. Police have not said what motivated the killing spree, which ended when Harpham died in a shootout with police.

“It’s a hard one to swallow,” Samuel Myers said. “It’s ironic. We have no way of knowing when our time is up. And to think you get shot when you’re bicycling past somebody. That shouldn’t happen at all.”

Myers was discharged from the Army in 2013.

Myers’ ex-wife, Tina, in an interview with The Associated Press, said police told her the shootings were random and that her ex-husband didn’t know his killer. She said the couple’s sons, ages 13 and 11, are struggling with their father’s death.

Andrew Myers grew up in northern Ohio, according to family.

The Army did not immediately respond to a Denver Post request for Myers’ military records.