Cop, a Las Vegas mass shooting ‘hero,’ killed in crash driving to work, CA officials say

A man has been charged a year after a police officer, remembered as a Las Vegas mass shooting “hero,” was killed in a freeway crash while riding his motorcycle to work, California prosecutors say.

The 67-year-old Compton man was charged with a misdemeanor count of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, in the crash that killed Manhattan Beach Police Officer Chad Swanson, 35, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in an Oct. 8 news release.

“The life of Officer Swanson, a husband and father of three young children, was tragically cut short. He had honorably served the Manhattan Beach community for 13 years,” District Attorney George Gascón said in the release.

His death was profoundly “felt by his family, colleagues, and all who knew him,” Gascón said.

“This has been a trying year for our Department, but we remain committed to honoring his memory by continuing to serve and protect our community,” Police Chief Rachel Johnson said in a city news release.

As Swanson rode his department motorcycle to work on the 405 Freeway on Oct. 4, 2023, he died in a multiple-vehicle crash, prosecutors said.

Investigators determined a “key factor in the crash” was improperly secured boxes of lighting fixtures falling from the Compton man’s truck onto the freeway, prosecutors said.

The Compton man is expected to appear in court in January and, if convicted as charged, could face one year in jail, prosecutors said.

‘Larger than life itself’

Following the deadly crash, Swanson was remembered as a “hero.”

“While off duty in 2017, Officer Swanson was wounded in the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas,” the city’s mayor, Richard Montgomery, said in a news release announcing Swanson’s death in 2023. “He served as a hero that day in 2017 and was personally responsible for saving several lives, despite suffering his own injuries.”

Swanson was with his wife that day, KNBC reported.

“Before he disappeared into the chaos, he turned to me and said, ‘Hold my beer,’” Hailey Swanson said at his funeral, the outlet reported. “He handed me his drink, and I watched him run off into the gunfire.”

She wouldn’t see him again until the next morning at a casino, “ where he came in shirtless and covered in blood, asking his wife where his beer koozie was,” Southern California News Group reported.

“I just wanted to try to help as many people as I could,” Swanson recounted days after the mass shooting in 2017, the outlet reported.

While others “spend their entire lives trying to figure out what their calling is,” Hailey Swanson said her husband knew his, KNBC reported.

“I hate that you had to die,” Hailey Swanson said, Southern California News Group reported. “But I’m so grateful that you lived.”

At his funeral, Scott Johnson described Chad Swanson as “a guy who was larger than life itself ,” Easy Reader News reported. They were friends since kindergarten, per the outlet.

“If you ever had the opportunity to meet him, you would know exactly what I mean,” Johnson said, the newspaper reported. “He was loud and aggressive, but kind, loving, and gentle. And he would kill me for saying that last part. But it was the truth.”

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