Verran Tucker, a CSC Nevada security guard who was working the Route 91 Festival, speaks to the Las Vegas Sun about what he witnessed the night of the shooting and his actions that helped save the lives of 60 people. Thurs. Oct 5, 2017. The mass shooting calimed the lives of 58 people, including a fellow CSC employee, and wounded nearly 500.
Friday, Oct. 6, 2017 | 2 a.m.
While Las Vegas emergency crews and law enforcement agencies have been praised across the world for their heroic and life-saving efforts during Sunday’s horrific mass shooting, one group of first responders was in action long before any official assistance arrived.
Contemporary Services Corp. of Las Vegas had more than 200 private security staffers roaming the grounds of last week’s Route 91 Harvest Festival, handling the usual duties of making sure those who entered the festival had tickets and that no one jumped a stage barricade to get too close to performers.
“We’re there to enforce venue policy, dealing with intoxicated folks and those who are belligerent, scalping and trying to get in with bogus tickets,” said Jay Purves, CSC vice president of Nevada. “That’s my staff doing all of that.”
But what started as a normal night — like the hundreds of Las Vegas festivals and concerts CSC has staffed in recent years — quickly turned to disaster. And it resulted in the lost life of one of the company’s own.
Erick Silva, 21, worked countless days and long nights over the last three years since joining the security company in 2014, his manager Gina Argento said. A graduate of Las Vegas High School, Silva would work up to 20 hours a day during major events like Electric Daisy Carnival and Life is Beautiful, and was known for his ability to stop fence jumpers from sneaking into events without a ticket.
Silva was one of 58 people killed as thousands of high-powered rounds showered the crowd from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay shooter Stephen Paddock’s hotel room. He died Sunday night at Sunrise Hospital after sustaining bullet wounds to the head.
“He would always be the first one there and the last one to leave; he always did more than asked of him,” Argento said. “He was an amazing kid. It’s a tragic loss because he was such a rising star.”
But like so many other CSC staffers on duty Sunday night, Silva reacted heroically before his death.
In his final moments of life, he helped people jump over the stage's side barricade he normally protected, to duck for cover and avoid being shot, Argento said.
Verran Tucker, 29, took a job with CSC in May to staff Electric Daisy Carnival. He enjoyed the experience and stayed on to supplement his work as a position coach with Eldorado High School’s football team.
Tucker, who played in the NFL for the Kansas City Chiefs, also found himself an unexpected hero on Sunday after leading a group of 60 concertgoers to safety behind the tour bus of festival co-headliner Jake Owen once Paddock started shooting. The bullet-riddled tour bus held steady for nearly an hour as Tucker held hands with the distraught — and several inebriated — concert attendees, coaching them to stay positive and calm, like they were members of his football team.
“Someway, somehow I had to get these 60 people to work together and focus on avoiding the shooter,” Tucker said. “We didn’t know he wasn’t on the ground.”
Tucker’s heroics led to a viral Twitter post when a festivalgoer, who had posed in a picture the day before with Tucker, urged the public to help identify him.
“He’s the reason my mom’s still alive,” said a tweet from the festivalgoer, which gathered nearly 1,000 retweets. “Wanna make sure he made it.”
Purves served for 20 years in the U.S. Air Force before joining CSC and working his way up to a senior leadership role. Also standing guard by the stage on Sunday, he said he’d never witnessed anything nearly as close to the pure horror seen on Sunday night.
Grazed by chunks of concrete and small projectiles scattered by bullets landing nearby, Purves and at least five other CSC staffers were part of a crew of citizens, on-site EMTs and private security responders that made gurneys out of concert barricades to carry wounded concert attendees to safety. Other CSC staffers used belts and T-shirts, including Tucker’s belt, to reduce bleeding from wounded concertgoers’ limbs and bodies.
By the time the shooting had stopped, only 12 of about 200 Contemporary Service Corp. employees had left the festival grounds, Purvis said. But it was expected, he said, as employees are required to learn evacuation techniques and take active shooter training through in-house training seminars as well as tutorials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“The thing about venue security, they’re in a sense the real first responders,” he said. “They’re in the thick of things from the very beginning until the end.”
During a press conference on Thursday morning, Clark County Fire Chief Greg Cassell described first rescuers on the scene before authorities arrived — including the 16 standby EMS personnel, thousands of civilians as well as Contemporary Service Corp. staffers — as “absolute heroes.”
“They performed wonderfully, literally under fire,” Cassell said.
Purves would be inclined to agree.
“We’ve never had a situation like this,” he said. “And I’m very proud of my team’s response.”
