Partner pays tribute to shot actor

The grieving girlfriend of an actor shot dead during a music video filming in Brisbane’s CBD has described him as a “true angel”.

Father-of-one Johann Ofner, 28, died after being shot in the chest on Monday while filming a video for the hip hop band Bliss N Eso at the underground bar, Brooklyn Standard, in the CBD.

As police try to work out how the incident occurred, Ofner’s girlfriend Kati Garnett took to Instagram to remember the man she describes as “the love of my life”.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, the best people are always taken from us, you were a true Angel,” she wrote under a picture of the couple embracing. “I love you so much forever and ever.”

Elsewhere, friends have remembered Ofner — a stuntman and actor who was due to feature in Channel 9 reality TV series Australian Ninja Warrior this year — as an adventurous, hard-working young man who loved his daughter and had an immense lust for life.

Police have not commented on the weapon or ammunition involved, but their investigation will focus on whether workplace health and safety laws were followed.

Hours before he died, Ofner uploaded a video to Instagram of props — including two guns and stacks of cash — being used for the clip and made an apparently lighthearted reference to “faulty props”.

The ABC has reported Ofner was shot at close range with a gun using blanks, a type of cartridge that has no bullet but contains gunpowder that is still dangerous when fired.

Australia’s film and television union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, says the death will spark a review of the film safety code, which is not legally binding but sits alongside enforceable workplace health and safety laws.