AUBURN – Stretched on the ground Tuesday night with his hands and feet bound – and with a gun pointed at him – Don Waite felt little fear.

The gas station attendant thought of the prayers he says every morning with his wife, Mary-Lou.

“We say the Lord will be with us and keep us from harm,” Waite said. “I don’t know why, but I felt at peace.”

He remained calm when the gunman, who had just held up BJ’s Wholesale Club, showed up in front of Waite’s truck, the man’s hands apparently pointing a gun at Waite through his windshield.

Inside the store on Mt. Auburn Avenue, the man had left two women bound and scared.

Police declined to say how the suspect – described as a white male, 5 feet 8 inches to 5 feet 10 inches, between 225 and 240 pounds, wearing a camouflage ball cap, a brown, hooded jacket, black pants and dark shoes – managed to get inside the store.

The store had been closed for half an hour when the man wearing a mask and sunglasses appeared in front of a woman employee around 10:30 p.m. He showed her a handgun and demanded money, police said.

“The manager did it right,” said Lt. Jason Moen of the Auburn police. “She complied, and no one was harmed.”

After getting an undisclosed amount of money, the man bound the manager and another female employee.

Meanwhile, Waite was outside. It was his routine.

Most nights, when the store’s gas station closes at 10:30, he waits at the back of the store for the women inside to come out. It’s just a simple action aimed at making sure everyone’s all right.

This time, Waite became anxious. After 15 minutes had gone by, and no one had come out, he went inside. He went through the door and noticed a figure behind a curtain.

“I knew then it was a robbery,” he said. He ran to his truck and was fumbling with his keys in the dark, trying to start the engine, when he looked up and the man was posed like a cop in a movie, with his hands together and pointing right at him.

“I didn’t see the gun,” Waite said. “But it looked like he had one.”

The man ordered him out of the truck. Waite complied.

He lay with his belly on the ground while the man tied his wrists and legs with plastic ties. He tried hiding his truck keys under his chest until the man demanded them.

He also told Waite he wouldn’t kill him.

“I don’t remember the exact words,” Waite said. He told him that he looked like a hard-working man.

Waite never got a good look at the robber, who sped away in Waite’s truck, a silver 2002 Ford F-450.

After the truck went around the corner, Waite freed his wrists from the loose binds and cut the ties from his ankles with a pocket knife.

He ran to the nearby Burger King, where he called police.

On Wednesday morning, police found the truck only a few hundred feet away in the lot beside Toddle Inn Child Care.

Police continued to search Wednesday for their suspect.

Meanwhile, they sealed the truck doors in red, evidence tape and hauled it to the Maine State Crime Laboratory for analysis.

Waite watched the police Wednesday morning, Mary-Lou at his side, and seemed unfazed by Tuesday night’s crisis.

Immediately after it was over, he’d called her, saying only that he would be late because there was a robbery. He told her everything later, when he was home to assure her he was all right.

He said he never worried for himself.

“The Lord was with me,” he said.