Woman married to metro-east police officer shares her tale of fear the day he was shot

Donna Carrier had just had lunch with her husband, Dupo police officer Patrick Carrier. Twenty minutes later, she learned that Patrick may have been shot.

That’s all she knew at that moment, and it was all secondhand. But she knew her husband was the only cop on duty that Sunday, so the report of an officer down had to be him.

“I called all three of my daughters and told them I think dad’s been shot. I told them to fan out and follow the sirens. We had no idea where they were,” Donna Carrier said.

What followed was a harrowing, desperate effort to get to the scene, where she finally discovered Patrick had indeed been shot, but that he was alive and had been taken to the hospital.

Officer Carrier survived the shooting and is recovering at home today.

“God is good - All the time. He made it!,” an elated Donna Carrier told the BND.

Patrick Carrier, 49, a 12-year police veteran, had been shot in the shoulder by a homicide suspect that afternoon. He had responded to a call about a shooting on McBride Avenue in unincorporated St. Clair County near Dupo.

Darryl T. Mantz, 46, had been fatally shot, police said. The suspect, Reginald O. Allen, 40, died of a self-inflicted gunshot. His body was found by police that night in his garage off McBride Avenue near where Carrier was shot. An AR-15 rifle was found next to Allen.

In a recent interview with the BND, Donna Carrier talked about that day, her husband’s career, challenges of being a police officer and an officer’s spouse and his road to recovery.

The day of the shooting and its aftermath

Patrick Carrier was shot while on duty on the afternoon of Sunday, Feb. 26. For his wife of 32 years, it was an afternoon of terror and fear, then relief when she found her husband was alive.

When Donna Carrier heard reports that an officer was down that day, she knew it had to be Patrick, because normally Dupo had one cop on duty on weekend days. On this day, it was Patrick Carrier.

“I actually heard it from my mom who heard it from a family friend in town,” Carrier said.

She raced from her house to try to find out what happened to her husband.

“I was heading south and as I came up to what we call the Dupo Bridge that comes from Cahokia to Dupo, I looked to my left and Stolle Road, you couldn’t even get down it. It was just lights and cars everywhere.’’

She stopped her car, jumped out and started running.

“I just was running toward the first street, which was McBride Avenue. I kept looking in all of the squad cars thinking maybe he was having a heart attack, maybe he was out of breath and was sitting in a car. I couldn’t find him in any of those squad cars and I couldn’t find his squad car. I got all of the way to McBride and I was screaming ‘My husband’s down there!’

“They don’t know if I am the wife of a police officer or the wife of the shooter. I couldn’t go down that way. I turned around and started running back to my car.”

Carrier had no idea where she was going. She ran into her two sisters and one of her brothers-in law. She asked him, “Was it Pat?”

“He said, ‘Yeah.’”

She learned from an Illinois State Police trooper that her husband was alive and was taken to Mercy Hospital South in St. Louis County. Her immediate instinct was to get to the hospital.

“That’s where we headed. I don’t remember the drive there. You go on autopilot, I guess. Literally, the first memory I have is them (the medical staff) telling me I had about 30 seconds. They had to take him because he was bleeding so bad. “

She told her husband he had to wake up.

“I told him, ‘I can’t do all of this without you.’ We have three adult daughters and two grandbabies. Your mind just starts racing, birthdays, Christmas. It’s like what am I going to do with the rest of my life if this is it? He had just been there with me 30 minutes before.”

To her relief, her husband responded.

“He said, ‘I am gonna be OK.’ And, he wanted to know if the girls and grandkids were out there (in the hospital). I told him everybody was out there.

“He told me not to go out there all upset and showing my emotions to them. He said it would get them all upset,” Donna Carrier said. “I was like well, that ship sailed. We all are officially upset. He was more worried about everybody else.”

Waiting for news from surgeons who worked on Patrick’s injuries seemed like such a long time. After a couple of hours, the doctors said they had stopped the bleeding and had intubated Patrick “to let his body rest,” she said.

The chaplain took her into his room. The first thing she saw, she said, pausing, was the tube that reached down his windpipe.

“I couldn’t make myself walk in. The (Dupo Police) chief, Dennis Plew, put his arms around me and we walked in together,” Carrier said.

She said the traumatic situation, from the shooting to the hospital to his recovery at home, would have been much harder on her without the support of family, friends, the police department, the mayor and citizens and officers from surrounding communities.

“There were officers there who had worked 12 hour shifts and stayed at the hospital for another seven or eight hours. It was overwhelming. It really was,” she said.

Will Officer Carrier quit policing?

Donna and Patrick Carrier were born and raised in Cahokia. They have been married for 32 years. They have three adult children and two grandchildren.

Patrick is a great husband. And his children and grandchildren have been his life, Donna said.

He didn’t start adult life in law enforcement, but it is something he really wanted to do, so he became a police officer.

“He wasn’t a police officer when I married him,” she said. “This was a career change for him later in life. This was obviously something he had been thinking about. With our daughters and grandkids, I think this was a way for him to have a hand in trying to protect them more so than what a normal father and grandfather would.”

Donna had difficulty accepting that he wanted to be an officer at first.

Even before the shooting, Donna knew the dangers associated with being an officer. And yes, she has thought about asking him to quit.

“It was really hard. I wasn’t really excited, initially, about him making that change, but you know it’s the for better or worse. How do you get upset about someone who wants to better themselves and help other people? It’s hard to be mad at that, as terrifying as it was and is and probably will continue to be.”

Is she still supporting her husband’s law enforcement career? Yes, of course she is.

“That’s actually the first thing he said to me after surgery…’I am not quitting,’” she said.

This despite what Donna calls “the sad state of affairs” when it comes to violence in society and disrespect for officers.

“People seem to have very little regard for human life, even a police officer. Going to do a job that is hard enough on its merit. Then to go in everyday to do their job and know you’re hated for it. They are yelled at and called names.

“Yet, they are the first one people call when their life is falling apart. You either support them or you don’t,” she said.

Out of the hospital and back home

Patrick Carrier is out of the hospital and recovering at home. Donna Carrier said it has been tough to see him in such pain. After all, as a big guy - about 6 feet, 6 inches tall and roughly 300 pounds - he’s always the first person to help move furniture and do other big jobs that need doing, even for strangers.

He has a long way to go to fully recuperate, Donna said. His shoulder blade and collarbone are broken, and he was shot in the neck.

But he is lucky to be alive.

She believes the shooter intended to kill him. Patrick “was laying in the ground after he (the gunman) shot him the first time. The guy came up to the squad car. The door was open.The guy kind of stepped over him kind of like you would road kill,” Donna Carrier said.

Then apparently Carrier’s training kicked in and he started to roll, when the gunman fired one more shot that grazed his neck. “Thank God for the training police officers have to go through,” Carrier said.

Patrick Carrier can do very little for himself at this stage of his recovery, and Donna Carrier and she is just happy to have the opportunity to take care care of her husband.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, “ she said.

And Patrick Carrier is overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, including the huge procession from the hospital when he was taken by ambulance back home. “There were so many police officers, EMT’s, firemen in full uniform, squad cars. That’s how they brought him home. It was overwhelming.

“You couldn’t get down or street. That’s how they brought him home. He truly got a hero’s homecoming.

“He will always say he was just doing his job. But, it’s’ been very overwhelming. He’s been overcome by emotions several times,” she said.