Killer of 2 Deputies Was Armed 'At All Times': Harford Sheriff

BEL AIR, MD – Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler released additional details Tuesday about events surrounding the Feb. 10 shooting deaths of two deputies and a suspect in Abingdon, including his assessment of who the man's real target actually was.

Watch the full briefing from the Harford County Sheriff's Office live on Periscope.

Gahler played the 911 call that led deputies to the Abingdon Panera and radio broadcasts from law enforcement reporting officers down, at the press conference in Harford County Tuesday afternoon.

Senior Deputy Patrick Dailey was shot inside the restaurant while approaching an individual wanted on a Harford County warrant for failing to appear. At 11:54 a.m., the officer had a 12-second interaction with the suspect, asking him for his identification and to show his hands, and the suspect immediately drew his handgun and fired, hitting the deputy above the left eyebrow, Gahler said. Although Dailey was making a forward motion as though to try and knock the gun away, he was fatally struck, according to the sheriff.

The suspect—David Brian Evans, 68, who had apparently been living out of his 2004 Ford Taurus—had been known to go into Panera and sit in the same spot, behind the drink machines, for the past couple of months, which Gahler said he likely selected for a "tactical advantage" so he could see vehicles and people coming and going, while they could not necessarily see him.

Evans' ex wife saw him out the window of the Panera that morning and had gone to the sheriff's office on Main Street to report that he was wanted. Officials there directed her to call 911, and when she called at 11:40 a.m., she said Evans had tried to shoot her in 1998. There was nothing in the system on that case, as at the time there was not enough probable cause to file charges, Gahler explained.

The vehicle where Evans had appeared to have been residing provided more information than court records would. The gun used in that 1998 shooting was located in the trunk of the Taurus, Gahler said. It had a silencer on it, accounting for why the ex wife did not hear a gunshot when the bullet grazed her neck outside her home those years ago.

Three additional guns were found in the trunk of Evans' car, plus one handgun was in a lunch bag on the car's floorboards, Gahler said.

“He was armed, we think, at all times," Gahler said. "He was ready for confrontation, ready to take some sort of action at a moment's notice."

After Evans shot Senior Deputy Dailey inside the Panera, he fled away from the shopping center area.

Deputy First Class Mark Logsdon was trying to find Evans when he was shot by the suspect, who was lying back in the driver's seat of the Taurus outside the Park View Apartments, Gahler said. He was shot by officers and found still holding his handgun, according to the sheriff.

Gahler said that the two deputies who died on Feb. 10 were not necessarily the ones Evans was waiting to unleash his aggression on, as forensic analysis of his phone showed Evans had been tracking the lives of his three estranged children and ex wife online and plotting paths to her home and a possible escape route.

“I fully suspect it was his intention..to take some sort of action against [his ex wife]," Gahler said, adding of deputies Dailey and Logsdon: "...through their loss, lives were saved, and I think that’s the lives that were saved.”

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