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UNLV grad fatally injured at work site was engaged to be married

Updated May 5, 2021 - 7:40 pm

A man fatally injured Tuesday at an east Las Vegas construction site was engaged to be married, had long-held dreams of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and aspired to compete as a bodybuilder, his parents said.

James and Sheryl Bice, the parents of Jeremy Bice, said the Bishop Gorman High School and UNLV graduate was working for a consulting firm when he was hurt at about 7:25 a.m. on the site, located at 3740 Boulder Highway, according to the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He died Tuesday evening at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

“He had plans. He had goals,” his father said. “You talked to him eight years ago, he didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow. If you talked to him now, he’d sit there and tell you exactly what he wanted to do.”

In an email, Teri Williams, a spokeswoman for the state health and safety administration, identified the location of Jeremy Bice’s injury as the “Chapman Dodge new project site.” He was working for Ninyo & Moore Geotechnical and Environmental Sciences Consultants, she wrote.

Williams declined further comment, citing an ongoing investigation. Requests for comment from the consulting firm where Jeremy Bice worked and Chapman Dodge were not immediately successful Wednesday.

Jack DeGree, a Burg Simpson law firm attorney representing the man’s parents, said the firm is investigating the circumstances of the fatal injury. Jeremy Bice worked as a senior soils technician, his family said.

“Details are thin and we are looking for answers,” DeGree said. “The family just lost their loved one in a horribly traumatic experience. We are involved to assist them in getting to the bottom of this.”

Jeremy Bice was born in Illinois but moved to Las Vegas when he was 3, his parents said. He wrestled at Bishop Gorman. He was kind and caring — a huge Chicago Blackhawks fan who was committed to his family.

He was also committed to safety while on the job, his father said, adding that “he was very, very professional about how he did things, the paperwork.”

“When he would come to change, he always had his orange thing on still, and his hard hat was always in his truck,” his father said.

The parents said they spoke with their son after the crash by phone and then at Sunrise. He told them that he was run over by grading equipment.

Jeremy Bice had been engaged to Kristi Gudaitis since June 2019. In a message to the Review-Journal late Wednesday, Gudaitis said, “It still doesn’t feel real.”

“It feels like he’s on one of his long camping trips with no service, but that he’ll be home soon,” she wrote. “He was such a sweet soul and there were so many layers to him.”

Jeremy Bice’s mother and father said that their son’s death demands information on exactly what happened in the hopes that those details may prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

“I definitely want to find out if something was wrong,” James Bice said.

DeGree said anyone with information may call his office at 702-668-2070. The Clark County coroner’s office was still investigating the cause and manner of Jeremy Bice’s death as of Wednesday.

Contact Glenn Puit by email at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter. Review-Journal staff writer Sabrina Schnur contributed to this report.

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