Mike Allred didn’t plan to run for sheriff so soon.
He preferred to wait 15 years after joining law enforcement to make a bid for elected office.
But that timeline changed — not because of the bullet Allred took, but because of its aftermath.
On June 23, Allred won the county’s Republican primary for sheriff, unofficial results show, cementing his place on the ballot in November’s general election. He ousted current Sheriff Kevin Potter in the race.
The road to this moment started almost a year ago. That’s when Allred drove into a nightmare.
A ‘normal night’ turned tragedy
On Aug. 17, 2025, Allred and his K-9 service dog, Azula, responded to a call.
“It was just a normal night, patrolling,” Allred, a six-year veteran of the force, said. “You know, just a summer Sunday afternoon.”
Then came the radio chatter. He heard that Tremonton-Garland Police Department Sgt. Lee Sorensen was headed to respond to a 911 hang-up. Soon after, Allred heard Sorensen ask for help from Officer Eric Estrada and other units in the area.
“I told dispatch I’m going to divert and go over, see what’s going on,” he said.
By the time he got to the scene, a home in Tremonton, he said he saw Sorensen and Estrada lying in the road.
Both men had been fatally shot.
Prosecutors allege that Ryan Michael Bate killed them after they responded to a domestic disturbance.
“It takes a second to register, because we don’t see that up here,” Allred said. “And then the adrenaline spikes, and I’m trying to get out some information to dispatch when, all of a sudden, I get hit.”
Sitting in his car under the dark northern Utah sky, Allred said he didn’t know where the shot came from, though it made the loudest noise he ever heard.
“I was dazed for a second, and then I looked down, and I just — my vest is covered in blood, and I knew what I had seen with Lee and Eric,” Allred said. “The only thing I picture is like … I’m missing half my head.”
The bullet had struck the right side of his head. Shrapnel from the round had also flown into Azula.
Not wanting other officers to drive into the line of fire unprepared, Allred started relaying everything he could to dispatch.
Eventually, he said, the cavalry came and arrested Bate.
“And then that’s when the — I guess you can call it — the pain and the healing really started, was those days and those months afterwards,” Allred said. “It’s not something that I would wish on anybody.”
‘The pain and the healing’
What followed were months of difficult questions and sessions of therapy trying to find their answers.
He remembered his therapist telling him that what used to be his normal life was gone. It was up to him to pick what would come next.
“I kind of get a do-over, per se,” he said. “I decided that if I’m going to make it through this, then I’ve got to put all of my effort into it.”
For a long time, he said, the painful night played through his head again and again. Eventually, though, he managed to control the memory.
“Some days, I let it play just because I don’t want to let it sit there and get bottled up, but it doesn’t affect me like it used to,” he said.
Azula also healed from her injuries, Allred said, even scoring higher certification scores after the shooting. She still has fragments of the round in her side, but they don’t seem to bother her.
“Even when officers get in car accidents, sometimes the dog won’t even go back into that kennel, because it remembers what happened,” Allred said. “But when I went and picked her up from the vet and walked around, I opened that door, she jumped in just like it was any other time. … She’s a fighter.”
Allred, who still has hundreds of small pieces of the bullet in his head, was told to take as much time as he needed to recover.
By March of this year, he began to feel stir-crazy. Eventually, he sat down with his wife and four adult kids.
“I’m going back,” he told them.
His three daughters weren’t thrilled with the idea.
“It’s something that we have kind of talked about as I’ve been going through this career, that these are the things that happen, and these are the things that I see,” Allred said. “But it became real that night, and they still worry about me.”
Despite their concern, he said he felt called to return to work.
And he’d already made up his mind to pursue elected office.
Making a run for it
In November, he said he learned details about the shooting that he didn’t feel had been properly investigated by Potter, the county’s current sheriff. Because Bate’s case is ongoing, Allred did not specify what those perceived issues were.
When he went to the sheriff with his concerns, Allred said he felt dismissed.
“I was like, ‘Well, he doesn’t have my back anymore,’” Allred said. “That was the moment that I decided that if something’s going to get done, then I need to step up and I need to do it.”
Near the beginning of the year, after Allred told Potter that he planned to run for sheriff, he said Potter thanked him for telling him. Since then, he said the sheriff hasn’t spoken to him.
Potter declined to answer questions when reached for comment.
Allred still faces three unaffiliated candidates in the general election: Chad Hayman, Douglas Christensen, and Allan Shinney.
If elected, the 49-year-old Allred said he wants to make sure his deputies have the knowledge and tools they need to do their jobs. This, he said, means more training and more communication within the department.
“There’s things that, as an office, as a department, that you need to be able to look at and be like, ‘OK, well this went good, this went bad, what can we learn from this,’” he said. “Still, to this day, we haven’t had a debrief, which is bothersome to me.”
He also wants to get the department more involved in the community. He remembered the weeks following the shooting last year, when he said everyone felt unified.
“We had neighbors that were talking to neighbors and people that don’t normally talk with each other were having conversations,” he said. “Well that’s what it’s all about.”
Whether he wins or loses, though, one outcome is certain: Azula is staying by his side.
