By Lyndsay Winkley
The San Diego Union-Tribune
LAS VEGAS — Sometimes even heroes need heroes.
As bullets rained down on concertgoers at the 91 Harvest Festival, Jonathan Smith shepherded dozens of people to safety and, in the process, took a bullet to the neck. His picture was shared tens of thousands of times on social media.
Many people praised Smith’s heroism, but the 30-year-old Orange County man might not have survived without a hero of his own. He told the Washington Post that a San Diego police officer saved his life.
That officer was Tom McGrath.
He was in the crowd with his wife and another off-duty officer when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a poker-playing accountant and real estate investor, started shooting from his suite on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Chaos erupted. Behind McGrath, a woman was shot in the chest. He immediately took off his shirt and he and his wife put pressure on the wound. The shooting began again and the couple was separated in the ensuing stampede.
“A lot of people had gotten hit,” McGrath said. “I was checking them, one, to make sure they weren’t my wife and, two, to see if there was any aid I could lend them.”
He managed to escape the area and found Smith injured in a nearby parking lot, McGrath told reporters Wednesday, speaking at San Diego police headquarters. San Diego police Officer Max Verduzco, who was also at the concert, shared his experience as well.
Both officers spoke with emotion as they recounted their still-vivid experiences.
According to the Washington Post, Smith was close to the stage when gunshots rang out during country singer Jason Aldean’s performance. Smith and his brother, Louis Rust, focused on getting their nine family members, including children, to safety.
At some point, Smith got separated from his family. As he turned to look for them, he noticed a group of people huddled behind a sheriff’s patrol car near the edge of the concert lawn, the Post article said. He started grabbing people and telling them to follow him as he ran to a nearby parking lot.
“I got a few people out of there,” Smith told the newspaper. “You could hear the shots. It sounded like it was coming from all over Las Vegas Boulevard.”
As the group crouched behind a row of cars, Smith noticed two girls who were exposed, according to the Post. He stood to tell them to move and was shot in his neck.
In another part of the festival area, Officer McGrath hid under a sound booth, waiting to escape the gunfire.
“It felt like the fourth (volley) was the closest,” he said. “I don’t know if it was because I was alone or the adrenaline was pumping, but I could hear the rounds hit the metal poles — hit the ground.”
In the next moment of quiet, he ran. He ran as fast as he could.
McGrath was looking for his wife when he found Smith. The officer used Smith’s shirt to pack the bloody wound, all the while telling Smith he was going to be OK.
“I told him, ‘We need to go. I’ll walk your pace. I’m not going to leave you,’” McGrath said.
The officer managed to find a pickup carting other injured people and he put Smith inside. He also helped tie a tourniquet on the leg of a woman who had been shot in the knee, he said. McGrath got into the truck and told the driver to find a police outpost.
They found one a couple miles away. McGrath told paramedics Smith needed to go to a hospital immediately. Reflecting on the ordeal afterward, McGrath assumed Smith had died of his injuries.
But he didn’t.
Doctors decided not to remove the bullet lodged in Smith’s neck for fear of causing more damage. He also suffered a bruised lung, a fractured rib and a broken clavicle, according to a GoFundMe started to help pay for accruing medical costs.
The officer and Smith would later reconnect and speak at length over the phone. During a CNN interview, Smith said he now considers McGrath a brother, and the officer concurred.
San Diego police Officer Max Verduzco was also at the concert when the shooting started. As the gunfire raged, he ran to a fence and helped push it backwards so people could slip past the barricade.
When he came across people huddling behind cars, he directed people to hide behind wheel wells and the engine, which would provide better cover.
He found himself near a Las Vegas officer who was trying to apply a tourniquet. Verduzco identified himself as off-duty law enforcement and offered to help treat people.
He went from victim to victim, giving his belt to one for a tourniquet, and his shirt to another to help stanch a bleeding wound.
“One girl was hit in the leg. She was freaking out, but I could tell she was going to be fine,” he said. “...I told her ‘Hey, look at me. You’re gonna make it.’”
The last victim Verduzco helped was an off-duty deputy from Orange County. He was suffering from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The deputy said he’d been shot while running to help injured people.
“I told him, ‘You’re a hero. I ran, but you’re a hero,” Verduzco said with tears in his eyes.
Deputy Joe Owen was shot twice, once in the abdomen and once in the thigh, according to the Orange County Register. The injuries were serious but not life-threatening.
Tuesday night, the officer’s father, a retired San Diego police sergeant also named Max, visited his son at his home. The elder Verduzco knows the horror of a mass shooting all too well — he responded to the San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre on July 18, 1984.
On that day, 41-year-old James Huberty shot and killed 21 people and injured 19 others before he was fatally shot by a sniper on the SWAT team.
When Verduzco became an officer, his father said he hoped his son would never have to respond to something so deadly.
©2017 The San Diego Union-Tribune