Elvis impersonator, veteran all shook up after fighting off muggers

When you come to Las Vegas, don’t mess with Elvis, especially if the Presley poser is a Vietnam veteran.

Dressed in a blue bell-bottom jumpsuit and strumming his Ovation Celebrity guitar, Elvis impersonator Vic Spann was back Friday playing for tourists on the Strip, three days after muggers tried to steal his tip jar.

Even though they knocked him out, and sent his gold aviator sunglasses flying, leaving him with a cut on his hand and bruises around his left eye, the two men and a woman who corralled him soon found out they had picked on the wrong guy.

The 66-year-old, whose stage name is “Spann,” is a former Navy helicopter door-gunner from the Vietnam War. He usually makes about $80 in tips a night playing Presley’s hits, schmoozing with ladies and posing for photos. After he collects enough, like he did in April, he writes a $1,000 check to Veterans Village, to help his “brethren” pay rent at the shelter.

The attack unfolded Tuesday night when he was setting up his music equipment in front of the World of Coca-Cola store, about a block north of the MGM Grand.

“There were three people sitting right over here in this corner, and they told me to move, get out of the way,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ because you never set up in front of another performer.

“I said, what kind of performing do you do?’ ”

One of the three replied that they were “conducting business. I said, ‘Oh. What kind of business?’ He pulled down his belt. He had several packets of a white substance, obviously cocaine to me,” Spann recalled. “He said, ‘This kind of business. Now get out of here.’ ”

Spann walked to a security guard near the store and asked him to call the police. Meanwhile, he said each of the three “took a huge amount of dope and ingested it. I thought, ‘This isn’t good.’ ”

He had set his guitar down. When he walked back “this 200-pound girl sat right on it. She broke the neck,” he said. “And I said, ‘Get up off my guitar now,’ and she wouldn’t. I turned around and I got hit harder than I’ve ever gotten hit in my life. I blacked out. I hit the sidewalk.”

When he awoke, the attackers were standing over him. That’s when his military training kicked in.

“When you’re in a situation like that, grab them by the belt, pull them close so they can’t do anything, and then you neutralize them,” Spann said.

When one of the men made a move toward him, he pulled him in close to his body. “I took pepper spray and just sprayed it. Then I did the same to the girl. She punched me in the mouth so I pulled her toward me and I pepper sprayed her, too,” he said.

Then he noticed that “they had my jug,” his tip jar. “I said, ‘Drop my veterans money right now.’ And they wouldn’t drop it. I said, ‘Drop it!’ ”

They were stunned. They dropped the tip jar and ran.

“I ran after them and they couldn’t see,” he said. “So they were bouncing off of poles and garbage cans, like a pinball in a pinball machine. And every time they bounced off of one I would grab them and spray them again.”

One of the men already had passed out near the Coca-Cola store but Spann said he chased the other two “halfway down the Strip ... cursing at them all the way because I was mad. I was really mad. Finally I got down to the end and they got away from me.”

But not for long.

“I sat down and the girl about 10 minutes later came out of nowhere and gave me an upper cut and knocked me back into the bushes,” the former commercial pilot said.

By this time, bystanders including three fellow veterans surrounded Spann to prevent another attack.

Eventually, three police cars arrived and paramedics transported the man who had passed out.

Police are investigating a battery allegation based on Spann’s account of the incident but have not cited anyone for the crime.

“They are questioning the guy who OD’d (overdosed) because he’s one of the partners, but he isn’t talking,” said Spann, a 100 percent disabled veteran, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and complications from exposure to Agent Orange defoliants.

His message: “Drug dealers stay away. You’re not wanted here. This is a beautiful part of the Strip. There are children and families walking by. ... You’re not welcome.”

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.