A bouncer at the bar that Dayton shooter Connor Betts tried to storm recalled seeing the mass killer’s “dead stare” just seconds before Betts was shot dead by police.

Jeremy Ganger, a bouncer at Ned Peppers, relived the heart-stopping moment he came face to face with the armed 24-year-old over the weekend.

“I looked at him right in the face. He had a dead stare,” Ganger told ABC News. “When he got to the door, I saw an officer over to the side of the street and I looked up, I looked at the guy and I said, ‘I hope the cop gets him before he gets me,’ because he wasn’t coming in our club.”

When the shots began ringing out on the busy street, Ganger said, he instinctively began trying to save lives.

“I could see him coming our way and I started getting people as fast as I could,” he said. “[I was] grabbing people, telling them to get in, get down, stay safe. Telling them to get all the way in as far as they could. Don’t watch the door, don’t watch what’s coming.”

“I was grabbing people as fast as I could, best I could,” he added. “And then watched a few people get hit.”

Ned Peppers was packed with some 200 people when police fatally shot Betts as he tried to dash into the establishment. Nine people were killed and more than a dozen were injured.