On Dec. 6, 2023, two University Police officers found themselves confronting an attacker. The man had just taken the lives of three faculty members — Patricia Navarro Velez, Jerry Cha-Jan Chang, and Naoko Takemaru — and seriously wounded a fourth. They brought the gunman’s violence to an end.
This is their story. It is a story of camaraderie and connection. And of the small moments and odd coincidences that tie the Rebel community together.
CHAPTER 1: A CALL TO SERVICE
Approximately 11:45 a.m. Dec. 6, 2023
Officer Damian Garcia was in a restroom inside the University Police headquarters, adjusting his bullet-resistant vest. He planned to do some maintenance work next. National Finals Rodeo was to begin the next day, and heart defibrillators needed to be installed in patrol vehicles.
He stepped out into a frenzied scene. Officers were grabbing gear and rushing out the door. Calls were flooding in to University Police dispatch with two dreaded words: active shooter.
Damian shouted at Detective Nate Drum, “Grab your vest.” “There’s no time,” Nate answered.
The two hopped in a car and drove from the Gateway parking garage on the east side of Maryland Parkway down University Drive. They turned north onto the sidewalk in front of Tonopah Hall, making their way to the campus interior.
Throngs of students were running from Beam Hall. “I saw fear on these kids’ faces as they’re running. I’m like, ‘This one’s real,’” Damian said.
At 62, Damian Garcia doesn’t strike you as someone who has worked more than 30 years in law enforcement. A jovial, gregarious presence, he’s like the uncle you’re happy to see during the holidays or run into at the grocery store.
Born in the Buffalo area of New York, he first got the idea to be a police officer because his uncle was chief of police in Niagara Falls. At a young age, his parents moved the family to Southern California, settling in San Diego. “My dad was just tired of all the snow,” Damian explained.
His father was a restaurateur, but it was his uncle’s career in law enforcement that stayed with him. “He started off on patrol and worked his way all the way up to be the chief of police,” he said.
Damian played high school football — both on offense and defense, he likes to remind his fellow officers. He was good enough to play at San Francisco State University, where he played on offense as a wide receiver, even though he preferred playing defense. “Defense is how you win championships,” he said. “If you don’t let people score, you win.”
He studied criminal justice and began his career in law enforcement on San Francisco’s BART public transit system before joining the Carlsbad Police Department in Southern California.
He worked nearly every job there was. Street patrol. Motorcycle cop. Beach patrol. And while the different roles all had perks, one job just seemed to fit his temperament best: school resource officer.
“I did that twice. Yeah, that was my favorite,” he said. “It was probably one of my favorite jobs because I coached high school football at the same time. But, I didn’t just coach high school football; I made sure I was at every basketball game, I was at every softball game, I was at every water polo game. I even went to the beach to watch the surf team.”
Many of Damian’s colleagues in the police department disliked dealing with young people, he said. “I had no problem with it, and I really made it a point to connect with them. I wanted those kids on the campuses to realize that police officers weren’t the bad people. We were there to help.”
For the “tougher kids” or the ones who seemed to challenge authority more than the average teen, Damian’s calm demeanor seemed to help. So, the calls about young teens illegally playing roller hockey on school property often came his way.
One of those roller hockey kids was Ian McDonough.
“He was always the responding officer,” McDonough said, noting that Damian would usually grab a stick and take a couple of shots before prompting the teens to move along. “That’s how I first really got to know Damian. He would show up and just talk to us.”
“With a guy like Damian, you didn’t feel that threat of intimidation by law enforcement. He was just like, super caszh.”
CHAPTER 2: ARRIVAL
Approximately 11:50 a.m., Dec. 6, 2023
Nate parked on the southeast side of Beam Hall, and both officers entered the building and began methodically checking each room on the first floor for threats.
“I’d say within 30 seconds to a minute after we got in, five more shots went off, and we weren’t sure whether that was our people [other officers firing] or not,” Damian said.
When gunfire first started echoing throughout the building, faculty and staff pulled colleagues and students into offices, locking doors and setting up barricades. Eight people huddled in the fifth-floor office of the Economics Department chair, Ian McDonough, that same high school hockey player from Carlsbad. The son of a police officer, McDonough knew what gunfire sounded like. Inside his office, one person called 911 while others heaved stuffed file cabinets and desks, as if they were empty boxes, in front of the doorway.
Professor Daraboth “Bot” Rith was in a fourth-floor restroom when he heard the alarm. Maybe a fire? he thought. He went up one floor to check on a student taking a final exam in his office. He found his door open, but the student was gone.
Rith closed his door and walked down the hallway to evacuate. Standing by the elevator doors was a man, taller than him, wearing a black trench coat. “I saw him. He was dressed up, you know, like one of us, like one of the faculty, like a professor,” Rith said. “When he saw me, he pulled something out of his black coat.”
“Oh, it’s you,” Rith recalled the man saying to him before opening fire.
Rith was shot 10 times in his torso and left arm. Somehow, he was able to run down four flights of stairs and escape the building. Outside, two Metro officers loaded him in a police cruiser and took him to a nearby ambulance. Their quick actions saved Bot’s life. [Read his story of recovery.]
McDonough and those in his office heard the gunfire. Then came kicking on his door. The group stayed quiet, but prepared to fight using office furniture and supplies, whatever was around.
McDonough peeked under the doorway and saw the light flicker as the person kicking the door walked away.
Nate Drum, 31, had been in Beam Hall many times before. First as a UNLV student, then later as a University Police officer.
Born in San Diego, Nate is the son of a police officer and a nurse. His mother, Nicole Drum, describes her son as a good listener and a rule follower.
“He was just an all-around good kid and very well-behaved and very disciplined. He was always motivated, always striving to be the best that he could be. He was always trying to reach his maximum potential. It was something his dad really instilled in him as a child.”
Nate was very much in awe of his dad, Tim Drum, and his accomplishments as a police officer. “Nathan knew all along that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to help people like his dad,” Nicole Drum said.
Like Damian, Nate played football. In high school, he was a wide receiver and punter, but a broken wrist caused him to focus on the latter. He played at a junior college in California, hoping to eventually make the roster of a Division I team.
He moved to Las Vegas and tried out for UNLV as a walk-on punter. He didn’t make the team but stayed to finish his undergraduate degree here. “He loved the campus,” Nicole recalls.
He got an apartment and a job at a nearby Starbucks. He began studying criminal justice. “He was busy, and he loved it. It was probably some of the happiest times of Nathan’s life,” his mother said.
Nate remained focused on his long-term goal, hitting the gym and studying hard to finish his degree early. “I didn’t want to waste any more time. I just wanted to get school done with so I could start my career as a cop,” Nate said.
One class, taught by now-retired professor Karen Seale, stood out. “It wasn’t even criminal justice. It was a stress management class,” he said. “We had to share different parts of our lives through songs we liked. And then you’d get feedback from your classmates.
“Then we would open up. And, so it was essentially like counseling, but in the form of a class. It didn’t feel like counseling. It was just sharing parts about my life. You could go as deep as you want and then you have your classmates giving you feedback on it, and it was all good stuff.”
What he learned has stayed with him, helping him engage when working with victims of crime and dealing with tragedy.
Nate graduated with a bachelor’s in criminal justice in December 2015 and headed back to San Diego, where he applied to the city’s police department.
CHAPTER 3: INSIDE BEH
Approximately 11:52 a.m
Damian and Nate took up positions near the entrance to Beam Hall’s atrium. There was so much noise with the fire alarm blaring as people fled the building.
University Police and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers poured into the building, climbing the stairs to the second floor, shouting directions to each other and following training protocols for school shootings.
The elevator doors opened, and a man in a black trench coat emerged. As seen in body-camera footage, a Metro officer pointed a rifle at him from the second floor and yelled at him to leave the building.
The man kept walking.
“He totally looked like a professor,” Damian said. “The fire alarms were blasting, and I started yelling at him, ‘Sir, come to us. We’re the police. Come to us!’”
Nate told Damian he was going to go talk to the man and ask what he saw.
The veteran officer’s “Spidey-sense” started tingling. Something was off. “He just didn’t respond. He didn’t even look up at us,” Damian said. “I said [to Nate], ‘I think that might be our shooter.’”
But, Nate didn’t hear him. He holstered his gun and followed the man out the front doors of Beam Hall.
Nate has a gift for calming and de-escalating tense situations, his mother said. “He knows the difference you can make in someone’s life with quick action, intervention, and showing compassion. Mental health is one of the first things he thinks of when he’s talking to a victim.”
After returning to California from Las Vegas, Nate was accepted into the San Diego Police Academy. He was 23 years old. His father was 22 when he became a police officer.
Halfway through the program, his training was nearly derailed by a family tragedy, but Nate was determined. He finished his training and joined the department. About a year later, he decided to move back to Las Vegas. “I wanted to be able to be a homeowner,” Nate explained. Even working full time for the San Diego Police Department, he couldn’t afford to live there.
University Police Services offered him a position, and he started in October 2017.
CHAPTER 4: THE CONFRONTATION
Approximately 11:54 a.m.
Nate caught up to the man in the black trench coat, just past the steps of the front entrance to Beam Hall. “The reason I holstered my gun was because I recognized at that point that I was just wearing a dress shirt and a pair of slacks,” Nate said. “If I approached this person with my gun out, it would cause a fear in him to, you know, he may not respond to me. He may be scared that I’m the shooter.”
The man in the black trench coat never said a word to Nate. “He looked at me with a straight face and then he puts his left hand into his satchel, and all of a sudden I see him pull out a black gun,” Nate said.
Damian was trailing several steps behind Nate, but he saw the gun, too, and his training took over. He raised his gun and fired, striking the man at least three times. Damian began to reload.
The gunman kept charging at Nate. There was a scowl on his face, Damian recalled. “It was evil.”
After more than 30 years in law enforcement, Damian retired and moved to Las Vegas to be closer to his mom and dad. “I knew pretty quickly retirement wasn’t for me,” he said.
He became a bailiff in the North Las Vegas Municipal Court system, but that wasn’t for him either. When he heard about a part-time job in events security at University Police, he applied and was hired in 2018. Damian quickly found himself working full-time hours, often doing security for the UNLV football team.
Soon after both joined the department, it became clear that Nate and Damian would have a special relationship. Both were from Southern California, had worked in police departments there, and had played football. And both loved to give each other a hard time — Damian about Nate’s time as a punter rather than a “real” football player and Nate about Damian’s Legoland police beat in Carlsbad. Don’t get them started on their age difference.
They worked well together, and often.
CHAPTER 5: A LEFT TURN
Approximately 11:55 a.m.
As gunfire exploded around him, Nate was very aware he was not wearing his bullet-resistant vest. He ran, dove, rolled over, and sprung back to his feet before finding momentary cover behind a police cruiser.
With his sidearm now unholstered, Nate scrambled toward the rear of the police cruiser. He’d lost sight of the shooter and didn’t know which way he might be approaching. Nate pointed his gun north, toward the mall and Wright Hall and — unbeknownst to him — away from the gunman.
Something pushed him to turn left, he said. For the second time, he came face-to-face with the gunman. Nate squeezed his trigger, firing multiple shots. The man in the black trench coat fell forward to the ground. About 10 minutes had gone by since that first call for help.
To this day, Nate has only one explanation as to why he turned left. He never saw the shooter in his peripheral vision. He didn’t hear him approaching. He just … turned left.
“Something just told me that I needed to look left. It was almost like — I felt as though — my head was kind of like forced that way. I do think my dad was with me that day.”
Nate’s father died on June 4, 2016.
He was about halfway through the San Diego Police Academy when his father took his own life. “I was with him at home when it happened.”
Nate doesn’t have firm answers as to why his father did it. “I think it was the trauma of the work he did.” Nate said his father, a child-abuse detective, carried the job with him, physically and mentally. It wore on him. He had chronic back pain from an on-the-job injury and, Nate said, likely suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
At the academy, the instructors were shocked Nate didn’t quit. “I told them this is where I belong. I knew that’s where I needed to be,” he said.
To stay, they required him to do six months of psychological counseling, one session per week. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. But it kind of helped me. I was able to learn to process a lot,” Nate said.
Counseling helped Nate learn to cope with the loss. He also learned to handle trauma and high-stress situations.
“I had to move on and make the most of my own life,” Nate said.
CHAPTER 6: THE AIRPORT
Sometime after 8 p.m.
Nate suffered scrapes and bruising as he evaded gunfire, but otherwise neither Nate nor Damian was physically injured further.
After the confrontation ended, officer-involved-shooting protocols began. Damian and Nate were isolated from everyone else and then interviewed by Metro detectives. Hours later, Nate and Damian left UPD headquarters together to pick up Nate’s mother from the airport. He had texted her earlier and asked her to come to Las Vegas as soon as possible. He couldn’t tell her why, but she soon figured it out.
In the dark of the evening, after 8 p.m., the detectives went together to meet Nicole Drum at Terminal 1 at Harry Reid International Airport. Nate hugged his mother. It was a different type of hug — “not one of those ‘I’m-just-here-to-visit’ hugs,” she said.
The two wept. Then she scolded him for not wearing his vest.
The two officers were placed on leave, per department protocols, while Metro detectives and the Clark County District Attorney’s office reviewed their actions on Dec. 6. And both have gone through counseling since.
Nate and Damian received local and national recognition for their bravery. On June 26 in New Orleans, they were awarded the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) Award for Valor.
When they both returned to active-duty last spring, they were assigned to work events security and for the UNLV football team, which includes traveling with the team. At the end of each game, Damian and Nate, wearing navy blue uniforms and triple-brim, campaign-style hats, run alongside the players and head coach Barry Odom as they cross the field to shake hands with the opposing team.
At a preseason practice over the summer, Odom introduced Damian and Nate to the players and told them they were the officers who had ended the violence on Dec. 6.
“I wanted to recognize them for serving our community, and I wanted our guys to understand that they’re part of our family and our team,” Odom said. “I wanted to pay them respect for the job of what all officers and service people do in the line of duty.”
After that, Damian said, “they all seemed to treat us a little differently. We have more of a personal relationship now.” Kind of like the relationships he built with McDonough and the kids in Carlsbad, Damian said.
Odom understood the change. “Everybody’s going to have a different description on what they describe as a hero, but in my scope, I would say they would deserve that label.”
Nate and Damian don’t mention the word hero when they talk about themselves and what happened on Dec. 6. They do, however, use the word hero when they talk about professor Rith, or Bot, as he’s known, and everything he’s done to get back to teaching students. They talk about the families of the victims who didn’t make it and all they’ve gone through. They talk about the staff with UNLV’s counseling and psychological services who have helped so many people recover emotionally.
“Damian and I do not consider ourselves at all this way. This is what the job is,” Nate said.
“I’m supposed to feel good right now, but I’m so shocked, still. From everything. I’m so frustrated and upset about what happened. I’m not superhuman or a superhero. I think given the circumstances that I had, I did the best that I could.
“This is not something I ever want to do — to take a human life. [The gunman] forced my hand to do that, because it’s not something I had ever wanted to do.”
When Nate and Damian found out a few hours later about the victims, Nate said, “It just made me furious, because it was just, why would somebody do that?”
It’s something we all will struggle with, they both agreed. “I think we need to move forward and not forget. But we need to move forward,” Damian said.
Dealing with the “why” in the wake of traumatic events is something Nate has dealt with for a long time. It goes back to the death of his father.
“The whole time I grew up, I wanted to be like him. And I wish he could be here to go through the aftermath of this experience. And that’s frustrating.”
But Nate is certain it was his father who saved his life.
“He was there on Dec. 6. I truly believe that. Me looking to the left? There was no way. I felt my head just forced that way.
“I can’t explain that.”
