Editor’s note: The following story contains graphic content.

“Big gun.”

Mary Willar will never forget the last clear words her husband Mark McCullagh said before he was rushed to hospital with life-ending gunshot wounds.

“The last thing he said was ‘big gun, big gun.’ ”

She’s hanging on, as well, to what his final, mumbled words might have been.

“I said, ‘I’m right behind you, Mark. I love you.’ He kind of said, ‘uuuh,’ almost like ‘yeah, OK.’ ”

Police Wednesday identified McCullagh, 36, as the victim of the second homicide in London this year.

They released few other details, saying an autopsy showed he died of a gunshot wound received Monday at his 504 English St. home, and they were looking for a pickup truck with white lettering above the rear wheels.

But Willar, 34, described to The Free Press the harrowing details of the killing of her partner of 20 years, and sketched some of their life together.

As teenagers, she and McCullagh did hard time on the streets of London, but lately shared their home with their cats, a disabled roommate they cared for, and a passion for art.

“He’d been pretty damn stable for a long time,” she said of McCullagh.

That the streets took him back for good Monday night as he was doing the most ordinary of household chores, taking out the garbage, still had Willar in shock.

“We’re drug addicts, recovering” she acknowledged. “Is that a good reason for someone to be shot?”

Late Monday night, McCullagh was taking out the garbage from the front porch of their home while Willar was on the couch in the front room playing video games.

“I heard a muffled thump and I heard him yell, ‘Oh f---,’ and I thought maybe he’d slipped with the garbage pail or something,” Willar said.

Then she heard him shout, “I’ve been shot,” before he stumbled in the doorway and started falling to the floor.

Two men rushed in with him.

“First a black guy comes in. He’s got a gun at my head. ‘Get down on the ground! Get down on the ground!’ ”

At the same time, “he looked kind of scared kind of, to me.”

The man gave his accomplice a questioning look, but both shouted, “Where’s the money? Where’s the money?”

Willar said she didn’t have any money, but they could take the little bit of pot she had.

“They didn’t take anything, they just left. They just looked around like, ‘what the f---?’ and walked out.”

She said she didn’t know the men.

Her husband struggled farther into the house to get some bandages from a roommate.

“I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot,” he repeated. “Oh my God, I’m bleeding. I’m bleeding.”

Willar didn’t think her husband was going to die. There wasn’t much blood and he was speaking clearly.

“I felt like this isn’t real, this isn’t happening,” Willar recalled, her voice quavering.

Police arrived in minutes after her 911 call and shouted at her to freeze, worried gunmen were still in the home, Willar said.

Paramedics said two bullets entered and exited McCullagh’s body, tearing through his aorta, she said.

“I don’t even know how he made it into the goddamn room.”

She met McCullagh on London’s streets when they were teenagers and both using drugs, she said.

“We had hard times there. We were kids downtown. We were idiots sometimes. We clashed a little bit with the police.”

Born in Brantford, McCullagh finished high school and learned how to repair computers from his father, an electrician, Willar said.

Once they were off the streets, McCullagh tried to start a home computer business, but it didn’t do well.

On a social media website dedicated to art, McCullagh went by the handle maniclymark and listed himself as an artist/hobbyist/photography.

“Photography is my real passion, but I have dabbled in everything from chalk and charcoal to oils and acrylics. I also love experimenting with different mediums. I also enjoy playing guitar, fishing, and pretty much anything to do with nature,” he posted July 14, 2010.

Willar said she and McCullagh lived on disability payments “pretty much hand to mouth.”

She’s been mostly clean for 10 years and McCullagh for longer, both relying on methadone but smoking some pot, too, Willar said.

Police are focusing on the drugs and their past, she said with anger.

“Yeah, we had a grow op once. We did our time.”

The first words out of Willar’s mouth when approached by The Free Press Wednesday were “It’s a smear campaign by police.”

As she finished her interview, two police detectives waited to talk to her. Later in the day, police released the information about the suspect vehicle.

- With files from Free Press reporter John Miner