Ontario’s Dylan Bailey recounts experience after being shot in line of duty

ONTARIO — If Dylan Bailey had only taken a bathroom break on Feb. 11, 2024, this past year would have gone quite differently.

Bailey, a 2013 Shelby High School graduate and Ontario police officer, was shot twice in his left leg and a third bullet grazed his right elbow while responding to a domestic violence call that Super Bowl Sunday.

“Super Bowl Sunday can go one of two ways — we’re either super slow or super busy,” Bailey said. “That day, we were super slow, until we weren’t.”

Bailey said he, Dispatcher Ian Metcalf, Sgt. Jeromie Barnhart and Officer Joshua Rivers were watching the game and eating pizza on their lunch break. At 8:47 p.m., they received a call that a man had allegedly taken a woman hostage at 1019 Landings Court.

“I had to pee super bad and took a step into the bathroom, but something in me said no, I’ll just pee right after,” Bailey said. “Had I gone to the bathroom, I would have missed this whole shooting.”

Barnhart, Bailey and Rivers all drove their cruisers to Landings Court, with Bailey pulling up by the sidewalk that led to the home.

Officers were told the male suspect had a gun, but didn’t have descriptions of anyone.

“We didn’t realize it was a Super Bowl party,” Bailey said. “For whatever reason, I grab my rifle, go around the back of my cruiser and a bunch of little kids come screaming out of the house —  I tell them to go to a neighbor.

“In that chaos, we looked through the front door and 10 feet away is where the suspect is holding the female hostage.

“He’s got his left arm wrapped around her and with his right arm, he’s holding the gun toward her head and moving down to her waist area too.

“I’m yelling to Barhart and Rivers because they didn’t have rifles out. I knew if there were shots taken, I was going to be the one (hit).”

Bailey said the suspect took the hostage down a hallway with a 90-agree angle, so he and the other officers couldn’t see them.

“There’s a thing called a fatal funnel, something you never want to get caught in — which is a hallway,” Bailey said. “There’s a clear sight to you, you’re an easy target and you can’t see much.

“It was Rivers, Barnhart, then me — we kind of all shifted left toward the door. The next thing I saw was an arm and a gun peeking around the corner. As soon as I registered it, there was already bullets flying.”

Bailey said the pain of being shot didn’t register right away — he felt vibrations in his leg where he was hit and a burning.

“My arm didn’t feel the same vibration as my leg did, but it had the same burning feeling,” he said. “I could feel my boot overflowing with blood and how gross that feeling was.”

“I knew if there were shots taken, I was going to be the one (hit).”

Ontario detective Dylan Bailey

Bailey said he was still in “work mode” after two bullets went through his leg and foot.

“Once Rivers put a tourniquet on me, I thought ‘OK, I’m not going to bleed out. I can get back in this thing,’ and I wanted to get back in it,” the officer said.

“I asked Rivers to prop me up behind my cruiser and I kept an eye on the house. I thought if this guy comes back outside, you’ve got to be ready for this.”

The Richland County ASORT team and hostage negotiators were called to the scene with assistance from Mansfield and Shelby police, and the Richland County Sheriff’s Office. Firefighter Ron Conn drove Bailey to the hospital in an ambulance.

“One of my wins for that night was getting shot through the foot, shin and arm and not falling to the ground,” Bailey said.

Another officer got Bailey’s phone from his cruiser and he sent a text to his wife Mikala: “I love you and Beau.”

“I texted instead of calling because I didn’t want to freak her out totally, or for me to not be able to get anything out with all the chaos,” he said. “She didn’t know what was going on because literally four minutes earlier, we were talking about the halftime show.”

Dylan and Mikala’s son Beau was 14 months old at the time. Bailey said he knew Mikala would have just put him to sleep.

“I don’t know why I was so concerned about my son’s sleep — I didn’t want Beau to come to the hospital because I thought he needed his sleep,” the 30-year-old said.

“Your brain does weird stuff and focuses on things you wouldn’t expect when you’re in that much pain I guess.”

‘We’re all Superman … until we’re not’

Bailey received IV fluids and medication the night of Feb. 11, but said he didn’t have surgery for another day or two. He went to the Cleveland Clinic for surgery to remove damaged bone tissue, bone fragments and nerve damage in his left foot.

He didn’t walk for a while, and traveled to Cleveland Clinic for physical therapy three or four times a week for the first month of his recovery — then at least once a week for six months following that.

He started using crutches, then a walker, and received custom fiber orthotics for his left foot. He eventually has to have a second surgery, but Bailey said doctors have told him to wait as long as he can.

“They can take out more nerves when the pain gets to be too much, but that could cause me to lose more feeling in my foot and I may have a harder time walking,” he said. “I walk pretty well on good days.”

Bailey said he’s thought about how he’ll share his experience from Feb. 11 and his recovery with his son Beau, now close to 2 1/2-years old.

“He’s seen the hole in my shin and foot, he knows that’s my ‘boo-boo,’” the now-detective said.

“I limp a little bit, especially in the evenings, so I think he’ll start to notice that more. But I guess I’ll tell him, ‘Dad was doing his job. There’s good people and there’s bad people, and the bad people can get you a little bit.’”

The young father said he was able to compartmentalize and separate his job from his personal life well.

“When I left the police department at midnight each day after my shift, I became Dylan,” he said. “I’m a cop at work, and I’m a husband, father, friend, son and brother outside of that.”

Bailey received a life-saving award and Officer of the Year in 2019, and also helped save someone from a suicide attempt in 2023 by pulling them off a bridge.

“I do this job to help people, but it’s also super fun,” he said. “I’m an adrenaline junkie.

“I got into this because I wanted to be the voice of reason and bring peace to chaotic situations.”

Bailey said he didn’t previously think about the possibility of being shot and thought, if it were to happen, that he would be OK.

“We’re all Superman or Superwoman until we’re not,” he said. “The only possibilities in my head on Feb. 11 were ‘I’m going to end the threat and save this hostage’ or ‘he’s going to give up, and the hostages will be saved regardless.’

“You get in the headspace of ‘I’m trained in this.’ It was false confidence, but it was still confidence,” he added.

“None of us should feel confident looking in the barrel of a gun … I wasn’t Superman before that, and I’m definitely not now.”

I got into this because I wanted to be the voice of reason and bring peace to chaotic situations.

Dylan Bailey

Bailey returned to work in October 2024

The police officer said he didn’t have time to come back to work for seven or eight months due to how much time he was spending in physical therapy and counseling.

“For me, coming back to the department was 100% the best option, I get to stay in law enforcement, I still get to help people,” he said. 

“It was obviously very hard to come back to this environment — hearing the radio, people being behind me or even someone throwing something in a trash can made me jump, so the department gave me my own office that’s a little quieter, but I can still be around my co-workers.”

Bailey can’t return to patrol duties per doctor’s orders, as he can’t run due to nerve damage in his foot and toe. He returned to the Ontario Police Department as a detective in October 2024, specifically focused on internet crimes against children.

“It’s too much of a liability for me to be on patrol, and if my toe bends just a centimeter, I’d drop to my knees in pain,” he said. 

Mayor Kris Knapp, who was the city’s service-safety director when Bailey was shot, said the entire city is grateful to have Bailey back.

“We’re trying to turn a tragic event into a positive, lifelong event, and provide him opportunities for whatever he chooses,” Knapp said.

“He’s crushing it. I can’t say enough great things about Officer Bailey and his family.”

Bailey inspires conversations of officer access to workforce compensation

Police Chief Tommy Hill said there was never a doubt in his mind he wanted Bailey back at the police department if he wanted to return.

“I didn’t care what we had to do,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep at night if I thought we weren’t taking care of Dylan or any of our people.”

Hill said support from then-mayor Randy Hutchinson, current mayor Knapp, as well as city council has helped the department create a position to which Bailey could return. 

The chief said he is currently working with the police union and city council to create a promotional path Bailey can be eligible for.

“He was in line for a promotion before this happened,” Hill said. “I don’t think he should lose any of those opportunities that he had before Feb. 11.”

Bailey’s experience has also inspired discussions about officer access to workforce compensation and mental health treatment for injuries incurred on patrol.

A psychologist diagnosed Bailey with PTSD from getting shot, but he said the Bureau of Workforce Compensation needed confirmation his PTSD was a “direct result of physical injuries” and not a result of “the circumstances surrounding injuries and not the injuries themselves.”

“I was really confused how those two things could be separated at all,” Bailey said. “I got a lawyer to appeal the decision and the hearing judge sided with us and we eventually got my PTSD treatment added to the claim.”

Hill said he didn’t expect to have to fight for Bureau of Workforce Compensation benefits as much as they did.

“The military has a great system for soldiers who are wounded in war,” the chief said. “I don’t know why our police officers and first-responders aren’t taken care of exactly the same way.”

Hill, Assistant Chief Rob Griefenstine, Knapp and council president Eddie Gallo have discussed policy changes and how to streamline the process for benefits with State Sen. Mark Romanchuk, as well as Rep. Jim Jordan.

Hill said he learned that a police officer who is diagnosed with a heart condition usually receives benefits pretty quickly from the Bureau of Workforce Compensation.

“If you’re a police officer and you file a claim for that, BWC presumes that condition is related to your job and they will offer something,” he said.

“The first thing we’re trying to do is get rid of having to prove the PTSD or mental trauma is related specifically to an injury like Dylan’s that was incurred on the job.

“You should be able to go into a hearing and say, ‘My officer was shot three times in the line of duty,’ and say ‘here are his physical injuries and presumably, he has PTSD or some type of trauma.’”

Hill said he wants to fight for better benefits and a more streamlined process for future police officers and first responders.

“If this is the last thing I accomplish in my career by shining a light and making a difference for care for our first responders, it will be the most important thing that I’ve ever done,” he said.

“I think this honors every first responder that’s been wounded in the line of duty and makes sure our future police officers are taken care of,” he added.

Bailey received Labrador Tilly from Valor Service Dogs in March 2025

Coming back to work in October helped Bailey gain a sense of professional purpose again, but he still struggled with anxiety and PTSD.

He recounted how his wife Mikala would tell him when she was going to sit next to him on the couch, and he would “involuntarily jump out of (his) skin.”

“It would freak me out, and all she’s doing is sitting on the couch next to me,” he said.

Bailey was getting mental health and medical treatment, which he said was encouraged during his days in the police academy.

“They preach to take care of your mental health, seek counseling out, take meds if you need to — that’s what I tried — so I should be good,” he said.

“But I keep having these huge panic-attack episodes. I’m ending up in my closet, having flashbacks. My wife describes it like I’m having a seizure.

“Even for family holidays, I couldn’t make it through gatherings of big crowds of people without having an episode. So that’s when I started looking in programs for dogs like Tilly.”

Bailey said he found Valor Service Dogs in Florida through a Google search.

Valor Service Dogs trains dogs for nearly two years before they’re matched with injured veterans or first responders.

Bailey set up a video call with the founder and Valor’s head trainer Ryan. He expected to wait up to a year and half for a service dog.

“It worked out within maybe a month of applying that I was approved and matched with her,” he said about the 2-year-old black lab.

Bailey earns 2024 Ontario Officer of the Year award

Bailey said he’s grateful to the police department and city leadership for welcoming him back to the team.

“I’m very lucky they allowed me to come back,” Bailey said. “Chief Hill and Assistant Chief Griefenstine, Mayor Knapp, city council — they’ve all been very supportive.”

Hill said he’s noticed a big change in Bailey’s mental health since coming back to the department compared to when he saw him in the hospital.

“Seeing him with Tilly is amazing, and I think tackling little things day by day probably helps him heal,” the chief said.

“I’ve noticed a level of gratitude that he has toward us, and I understand it, but he shouldn’t have to feel that way. I think the options of either a medical retirement or creating a position that an officer can come back to without putting the city in a compromising position should be automatic.”

Bailey receives Purple Heart award from American Police Hall of Fame

Even after physical therapy up to three times per week at the beginning of his recovery and receiving doctor’s orders to not go out on patrol again, Bailey said he wouldn’t change anything he did that night.

“I would go back to patrol in a heartbeat if I could,” the detective said. “I’d still go to Landings Court on Super Bowl Sunday 2024, I’d still do the exact same thing that I did that night. Everyone ended up alive, no kids got hurt.”

This Super Bowl Sunday, Bailey watched the game at home and celebrated the Philadelphia Eagles achieving victory.

“The Eagles are my team,” he said. “I’ve been a fan as long as I can remember … When they won, that helped. I think that was a gift from God — something good happened on Super Bowl Sunday.”

Bailey doesn’t even wish he took a bathroom break that evening on Feb. 11, 2024.

“I would have been miserable if I did that,” he said. “I probably would quit. If Barnhart or Rivers got shot without me being there because I couldn’t hold my bladder, I would have lost my mind. I really honestly would quit.”

He received a law enforcement Purple Heart award from the American Police Hall of Fame.

“The department voted me Officer of the Year for 2024 even though I only worked a month and a half of it,” Bailey quipped.

Hill said there was “no question” Bailey had earned the award.

“When he was on the road, he’s the type of officer you want on a call,” Hill said. “He’s very confident, very professional.

“He’s attacking the detective position with the same type of vigor he had on the road. When you have Dylan Bailey working on something, you know the job is going to get done and it’s going to be done right.”