(CNN) Patrick Smith was the type of guy to always lend a helping hand, wife Elizabeth Smith said.

So it wasn't out of the ordinary that he went to check on the house of a concerned next-door neighbor who heard noises outside her home. What happened next would rock his family.

Smith, 41, was shot multiple times by an alleged burglar running from officers, police said. He spent the next eight days in a hospital, his wife said, dying on Thanksgiving day.

The incident began November 14 in Barstow, a city 115 miles northeast of Los Angeles, when police received a call about a burglary, according to a news release from the Barstow Police Department. The caller said their neighbor's home was being broken into and that flashlights could be seen inside the neighbor's home. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Smith said, a different neighbor called their house because she heard noises outside.

When officers arrived, they chased two teenage boys on foot to the back of the burglarized home and lost sight of them. As officers were searching for the boys, they heard multiple gunshots from the side of a nearby home, police said. That's where officers found Smith suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

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