Nine months after attack, professor is back at UNLV

The UNLV professor who was critically injured by an active shooter on campus in December 2023 returned to the classroom Wednesday, university officials said.

Often referred to as the “fourth victim,” Daraboth “Bot” Rith — an economics professor in the Lee Business School — was shot 10 times during the Dec. 6 tragedy that claimed the lives of three professors. He was found by two Metro Police officers, who provided life-saving medical care.

“These cops saved my life,” Rith said in an interview with UNLV’s communications office. “Without them, I could be gone and all my dreams, all my sacrifice, how I invested in my education could be very useless.”

The university said Rith wouldn’t be available for interviews “due to the stress of speaking publicly.” He instead shared his story with the university’s communications team.

In the interview with UNLV he continued, “I feel that I owe gratitude — immense gratitude — to the service that they do to save people’s lives. My life, that even though I feel that this is faith, this is destiny, that God kindly gives me a second chance to live.”

A shooter walked onto UNLV’s campus and began firing shots on the fourth floor of the Frank and Estella Beam Hall, home to the Lee Business School.

He killed three faculty members — “Jerry” Cha-Jan Chang, 64, a professor in the department of management, entrepreneurship and technology, of Henderson; Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, an assistant professor of accounting of Las Vegas; and Naoko Takemaru, 69, a professor of Spanish and linguistics, of Las Vegas — and injured the 38-year-old Rith before being killed by police in front of the building.

Rith, despite being shot 10 times, according to the university, escaped down four flights of stairs to exit on the east side of Beam Hall, where he ran into Metro Police Officers Jake Noriega and Ty Vesperas. The two had just arrived on scene at the main entrance of Beam Hall, then used a tourniquet among other methods to provide Rith care as they moved him with their police cruiser to an awaiting ambulance.

With the help of UNLV leadership, Rith’s wife and daughter relocated to the United States from Australia — where Rith began his career, according to the university’s communications office. He spent nearly three months in a hospital.

When Rith was first recovering, the doctor would ask him to stand from the wheelchair he was using, but after only two seconds, Rith said he would already feel so fatigued he’d start to faint.

But Rith was determined to walk again, so his medical team began a slow process of rehabilitation that included having him walk down the hallway bit by bit — first two steps forward, then five, and 10. Stairs were the next challenge and caused him “immense pain,” he said in the interview with UNLV. The professor admitted he would sometimes cry and pray at night to be healed so he could walk again.

Postcards are what kept him going, he said. Brightly colored cards with heartfelt messages of support from family, friends, co-workers and students were sent early in Rith’s recovery journey and kept him motivated to continue.

“The postcards, the wordings that (were) put in there, it reminds me of someone who always cares about me, my well-being and they want me to be back, to be the person — the good person — I was before the incident,” Rith said. “And all the words from anyone — from colleagues, from friends, from students, from family — they are very meaningful for me.”

That is especially true for officers Noriega and Vesperas, with whom the family has been in contact and given gifts of appreciation.

UNLV said Rith had led an online class during the summer before walking back onto campus this fall to teach four courses.

“As I reflect on these past nine months, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the exceptional care provided by medical professionals; for the remarkable support networks that surrounded me; and for every person who believed in my recovery even when I struggled to believe in myself,” Rith said Tuesday morning. “Sitting here today, I’m not just a survivor, I am someone who has been profoundly transformed by this experience. Like I said, I am back now, ready to embrace my role as a professor with renewed passion and enthusiasm, eager to teach the subject I hold dear, that is, economics.”

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