COPLEY TWP.: Huddled in fright in a darkened boiler room, cuddling her infant daughter, Melonie Bagley listened over her own heavy breathing as her neighbor’s pacing above drew closer.Her 3-year-old daughter was clinging to her leg. Her 9-year-old son stood bravely near the little boy, the kid in the Steelers jersey they had just met minutes ago when he rushed through the front door seeking refuge from the pursuing gunman.She had heard the gunfire outside. She had seen fear in the face of a grown man who ran through her house moments before the little boy ran inside begging for help.In that cramped room, Bagley, just 28, could only urge the children to pray with her. The man’s feet were kicking in the basement door. He was coming down.What reads like a horror-film cliche remains all too real for the Copley mother as she recalls that Sunday morning on Schocalog Road. The footsteps of Michael Hance were real and he was determined to hunt down 11-year-old Scott Dieter, who would be the last of his seven victims.Holding her baby almost three weeks later, Bagley recounted the Aug. 7 events during an interview Friday. Her details of that morning are infinite as the minutes flash back.“It’s like you’re not there, but you are there,” she said.Indeed, Hance, 51, found the boy he wanted, shooting Scott Dieter in the face, making the innocent child his last mark. In a matter of minutes, Hance, a Norton High grad and Copley resident, would be killed by police gunfire outside Bagley’s home.The mother and her children survived and are left with the memories.Bagley, a Copley High graduate, has not slept in the Schocalog Road home since. Instead, she’s living in an area hotel with her children; a stream of visitors brings clothes and food.She and her son, Dae’Shawn, who remained with Scott Dieter until the end, are receiving counseling and help from victims’ advocates. Their brush with death remains fresh.“I thought we were gone,” she said.The morning started like any other Sunday for Bagley and her children in the home they shared with her mother, Debbie, and her mother’s companion, Garry Arnold.“Sundays are lazy, usually,” she said.As usual, Bagley woke up later that morning — 10:30 or so — and turned on some music in her basement-level bedroom. Arnold was on the first floor, fixing food. Her mother was away at work. Her oldest daughter, 11-year-old Ebune, had spent the night with her aunt.Bagley had barely finished brushing her teeth when Arnold shouted from upstairs.“He said, ‘Mel, turn down the music. I think I hear gunshots,’ ” Bagley said. She went upstairs to listen for herself.“All of a sudden, I hear — boom, boom, boom.”Seconds later, a woman’s screams started rolling in from outside.“I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but she was screaming and hysterical and everything,” Bagley said. “Then this bald-headed man came up and said there’s a man going around Copley shooting people.”That bald man, she later learned, was Michael Johnson. He was fleeing Hance and the carnage behind him. Bagley made the first of her three calls to 911.In Hance’s wake lay Gudrun Johnson, 64, who was shot once in the head. Russell Johnson, 67, was shot in the head and chest. Both were found in the driveway of their Goodenough Avenue home.The Johnsons’ granddaughter Autumn Johnson, 16, and friend Amelia Shambaugh, 16, both Copley High students, were killed in a minivan parked in the driveway. Autumn was shot in the neck, chest and extremities. Amelia was shot once in the head. Hance had already killed Scott Dieter’s father, Craig, 51, and the Johnsons’ son, Bryan, 44. Hance also shot his girlfriend and Craig Dieter’s sister, Rebecca Dieter, twice. She remains hospitalized.Beth Dieter, a Kentucky resident visiting Copley with her family, apparently witnessed the shooting death of her husband, Craig, and ran to a neighbor’s home. Michael Johnson, with Scott Dieter close behind, was running for his life.Running from killerFor some reason, they both chose the nearby Bagley residence. Michael Johnson arrived first.“You could tell he was scared. You could see it in his face,” Bagley said. Johnson was pacing, sweating and breathless. “He said a man was going around Copley shooting people.”Then little Scott appeared, running down the road. He wasn’t alone. Hance was following.“I saw this man with a gun right after him,” she said. “I looked out the window and saw the little boy. And then I saw this man with a gun right after him. For some reason, I can’t explain, the little boy came to our house.”Scott seemed to fly up the front steps of the home.“He was saying, ‘Help me, help me,’ ” she said.Arnold and Bagley locked the steel door behind Scott, but Hance wasn’t fazed. He was still coming; shots were ringing out, dinging the siding of the house.While Johnson made his way upstairs to apparently escape through a window, Arnold, Bagley and the kids rushed to the basement.“We’re not even thinking. We’re just trying to get to the basement,” Bagley said.Hiding in darkInside the boiler room, Bagley tried to tuck the children behind the furnace. She then made a second call to 911 and turned off the lights. Arnold, meanwhile, was looking for a weapon. The best he could find was a broom. “We have nothing. We don’t have guns,” Bagley said. “He got a broom. I can laugh about that now. That broomstick.”Everyone could hear Hance, still outside, but adamant about getting Scott.“We can hear him … He was trying to get inside the house, kicking the door,” she said.Arnold ran up the basement stairs to lock the door and then took refuge in a laundry room. Bagley and the kids could only wait.“We’re in there and the little boy is like, ‘help me, help me,’ ” Bagley said. “We were just standing there like, I don’t know what we were thinking or what was going through our heads. We were like, let’s pray about this.” Scott made his own prayer, pleading: “God, please help us.”Bagley called 911 a final time, helping police track down Hance. The chase was nearing an end.Hance, meanwhile, broke in through a side door, apparently smashing the window, reaching inside and turning the lock.In her call, she told a dispatcher: “The gunman is in the house.” She corrected the dispatcher on the address and was assured police were coming.“It seemed like a lot of time, but it really wasn’t,” she said.Footsteps approachHoled up in the basement, Bagley could hear the footsteps. Eventually, Hance began kicking the door.“I’m so scared,” she said. “I hear him going down the steps. The dispatcher was like, ‘stay in the basement.’ And I’m like thinking, ‘Where am I supposed to go?’ There’s no magical door. I just closed the door and locked it and we backed up.”Hance was in the basement, rifling around. One-year-old Arrieona was crying. Destany, 3, was holding onto her mother’s hand in the dark room. Hance was at the doorway.“All you could hear was the door shake. It felt like forever. When he turned the doorknob, it was like a scary movie, it seemed slow,” she said.“Finally, he kicked the door open. He was standing there. I was standing there. He pulled the gun up and he’s like, ‘Where’s the boy?’ I’m like, ‘There’s no boy here. There’s no boy here.’“He said, ‘I seen the boy come in.’ Which I know he did because he came in right behind him … I’m like I just lied to him and he has a gun to my head.”Hance made his way inside the small, pitch-black room, eventually using a penlight to navigate his way. She said Hance looked nothing like the picture she has seen in news accounts after the shooting. The tall, thin man appeared crazed or drugged.Bagley decided to take the four kids and try to peacefully walk away.“For a slight second, I’m like, we could just try to get out instead of standing here and getting shot,” she said as tears began to slide down her cheek. “I’m numb. It’s like it’s not happening, but it is. I just thought either we try, or we all die.”Urging the children to “go, go,” Bagley began to walk up the stairs.“By the time I reached that third step, I heard the gunshot. I stopped and just knew. I didn’t look back or anything. You just knew what happened.”At the top of the steps, she looked back and Hance was there at the bottom of the staircase.Bagley thought all the children were following her lead. Dae’Shawn wasn’t. He decided to stay with Scott and try to help him.Police arriveThe mother took her daughters to the front door. Outside, she saw police. Behind her was Hance, plodding.“As I’m coming down the steps, the cops yell out, ‘Where’s he at, where’s he at?’ ”
 she said.Hance appeared outside. Copley police officer Ben Campbell and former police officer Keith Lavery, who lived in the neighborhood, were waiting. Hance refused to surrender and was met with police gunfire.He died on the lawn outside the house; his 10-minute, 21-bullet, eight-victim assault was over.Bagley and her children found shelter at a neighbor’s house immediately after the shooting. Soon her brother, Otis Bagley Jr., arrived, forcing his way around yellow police tape to get to his family.To end the nightmare, Bagley consoled Dae’Shawn, who still had Scott’s blood on his legs. Together, they walked over to Hance’s body to confirm that the boogeyman was indeed dead.“He wanted to show him the bad guy was gone,” she said.Phil Trexler can be reached at 330-996-3717 or ptrexler@thebeaconjournal.com.