Feb. 10, 2016, began as a typical, if very cold, February morning. By day’s end, two Harford County sheriff’s deputies had been shot and killed in a busy Abingdon shopping area, leaving the community stunned and reeling.
Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, who had been sheriff only a little over a year at the time, has worn a dark-blue “Harford Strong” wristband every day since the murders. He said he thinks every day about the two deputies who were killed.
It was Ash Wednesday, and a blast of icy weather caused schools to close. Abingdon’s Panera Bread restaurant was busy, filled with families and children, when Senior Deputy Patrick Dailey approached David Evans.
Evans, a fugitive from Florida who turned out to have a long history of violence and eluding law enforcement, pulled out a gun and shot Dailey in the head. Evans also killed another deputy, Deputy 1st Class Mark Logsdon, outside the nearby Park View at Box Hill senior housing complex before he was shot and killed by law enforcement.
The brazen murders of two Harford deputies — the first such killings for the agency since 1899 — rocked the law enforcement community and prompted a huge outpouring of sympathy from residents.
The crowd of police officers stand and salute as pallbearers carry the casket of Deputy 1st Class Mark Logsdon inside the APG Federal Credit Union Arena for his funeral service. (Staff file)
In the days and weeks that followed, the Panera Bread restaurant became a memorial site, covered in flowers, balloons and mementoes. A Sheriff’s Office car at the Southern Precinct was likewise covered in memorials. Hundreds of people lined Interstate 95 overpasses and Bel Air streets for funeral processions, and thousands came out to pay their respects at Mountain Christian Church and Harford Community College, where the funerals were held.
Many of those touched most deeply by the events of Feb. 10, 2016, including some eyewitnesses who spoke to media at the time, didn’t want to speak for this story.
One of Dailey’s two sons, Tyler, joined the Sheriff’s Office’s as its first police cadet the year after his father was killed. Tyler Dailey declined to be interviewed for this article.
Ali Paskun, who had just moved to Harford County from Baltimore when the shootings happened, said she knows a deputy who still can’t go inside that Panera Bread location. Paskun volunteered at the Dailey funerals to help guide the hundreds who came through Mountain Christian.
“It was so heartbreaking, but it was also uplifting, because I saw how many people jumped at the opportunity [to help],” she said. “To see how the law enforcement came together, but also to see how the community came together — living in Baltimore City, I had never seen that. This was like my first ‘small-town’ [major event].”
In February 2017, on the one-year anniversary of the shootings, a woman takes a moment to kneel in front of the small memorial at the Panera Bread at the Boulevard at Box Hill after a remembrance ceremony in honor of Senior Deputy Patrick Dailey and Deputy 1st Class Mark Logsdon, who were killed in 2016. (Staff file)
Craig Clapper said he was waiting for his food at Panera that day, when he heard a loud pop, saw everyone rushing for the front door and witnessed “the other cop run after the suspect out the side door of the restaurant,” where “they ran across the parking lot and shot at each other.”
The incident “did show just how fast something like that can happen on a normal day in the county. I was pretty shaken[,] I can tell you that,” Clapper said, through a Facebook message.
Tributes to Patrick Dailey and Mark Logsdon are still everywhere, from the Boulevard at Box Hill flagpole to a “Heroes Highway” sign on Route 924, currently decorated with two small American flags.
And, an annual memorial blood drive organized by the families remains well attended. The one scheduled for Feb. 10, 2026, Gahler said on Monday, is nearly filled up.
Have a tip? Contact Bryna Zumer at bzumer@baltsun.com, or on X as @brynazumer.
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