A Manhattan Beach police officer who survived the 2017 Las Vegas music festival mass shooting died Wednesday, Oct. 4, when a car collided with his police motorcycle, throwing him to the ground, officials said.
On 10-4-23, at about 5:15am, Manhattan Beach Police Department Motorcycle Officer Chad Swanson was involved in a fatal on duty traffic collision on the 405 Freeway. pic.twitter.com/C3eZjNojHI
— Manhattan Beach PD (@manhattanbchpd) October 4, 2023
Officer Chad Swanson, 35, was likely still headed in to work when the driver of one car apparently hit another on the northbound 405 Freeway on the edge of Carson near Del Amo Boulevard at around 5:15 a.m., according to the California Highway Patrol. The second driver appeared to lose control and careened into Swanson.
Manhattan Beach police Lt. Kelly Benjamin said Swanson was married with three sons.
“We’re hurting, we’re grieving,” Benjamin said.
— Manhattan Beach PD (@manhattanbchpd) October 4, 2023
CHP Officer Steve Carapia told reporters at the crash scene that a fourth vehicle may have been involved in the crash, but it wasn’t clear how.
Carapia said the first car is believed to have triggered the collision when the likely speeding driver made “an unsafe lane change.”
“We still haven’t determined which vehicle hit who,” Carapia said. “We don’t want to rush this, we’re being very methodical.”
All of the drivers stayed at the scene, Carapia said. There was no information Wednesday about any arrests related to the crash.
First responders performed life-saving measures on Swanson, stabilizing him before he was taken to a hospital, where he died. A second person was hospitalized with minor injuries.
Outside the Manhattan Beach police headquarters later Wednesday, Chief Rachel Johnson said Swanson worked for the city for 13 years. Johnson said he became a motorcycle officer in 2017. He previously worked as a civilian parking enforcement employee at the Hawthorne Police Department, Johnson said.
She said Swanson loved his family dearly.
Johnson described him as a person who would bring joy to other arounds him, calling the fallen officer “a seriously good dude.”
“To know Chad was to love him,” Johnson said. “If you weren’t laughing when he was in the room, you simply weren’t listening.”
The chief said of Swanson that “it was clear to anyone who knew him how much he loved being a dad.”
Earlier that day, Benjamin, the department spokeswoman, recalled that Swanson was in the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017 when a gunman opened fire from a broken-out window of the former Mandalay Bay hotel overlooking the site.
Benjamin said Swanson helped get shooting victims and others out of the area.
Rachael Parker, a Manhattan Beach police records technician, was killed in the shooting. The attack also took the life of another beloved member of the Manhattan Beach community. Sandy Casey, 35, was a special education teacher at Manhattan Beach Middle School.
Swanson in 2017 described a scene of whizzing bullets and chaos unfolding in Las Vegas in a wide-open venue where there was no place to take cover. He was struck in the arm by a fragment of a bullet that hit the ground, and went back and forth carrying people to safety and applying tourniquets.
“I just wanted to try to help as many people as I could,” Swanson said at the time. “At a certain point, we realized that there were no more people in the concert venue that were alive that we could help. We canvassed the whole area to make sure we didn’t miss anybody.”
Manhattan Beach Mayor Richard Montgomery said Wednesday was “a sad and emotional day for all of us here” following the news of Swanson’s death.
Midday, a procession of dozens of police cruisers and motorcycles escorted Swanson’s body to the coroner’s office. Los Angeles area firefighters saluted from freeway overpasses as the procession travelled below.
City News Service contributed to this story.
