An accomplished Republican professional who served as chief operating officer of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) during the Donald Trump administration was among those shot in a vicious carjacking spree in Washington, D.C., on Monday night, one that ended in police killing the perpetrator in Maryland early Tuesday morning.
Mike Gill is in a hospital in critical condition after being shot while picking up his wife, an education lawyer, blocks from the White House on K Street in downtown D.C. at 5:45pm.
“We can confirm that Mike Gill was the victim of the shooting at the 900 block of K Street Northwest on Monday evening and is in critical condition. Out of respect for the family, we have nothing additional to add at this time,” Erica Richardson, a spokesperson for the Gill family, said in a statement to The Daily Wire.
After shooting Gill, the same man is believed to have conducted at least two carjackings and one attempted carjacking, and the victim of one of them has died, The Washington Post reported.
Police said the perpetrator got into the parked vehicle and shot the victim before fleeing on foot, and that the victim — Gill — collapsed outside the vehicle. The Post said that he had called his wife to say, “Hey, I’m downstairs,” and when she arrived at the ground floor, he had been shot, with the wife rushing out and saying, “Oh my God, that’s my husband.”
The Post, citing witness Yolanda Douglas, said the wife “ran toward her husband and grabbed his hand. ‘What happened?’ she asked, but he did not respond.”
Douglas “saw the victim, in a dress shirt and sweater, sprawled on the pavement with one foot still in the passenger’s side of a car. His right hand was twitching as blood pooled around his head,” the Post said.
An hour later, the suspect tried unsuccessfully to carjack another vehicle on Third Street NE, before fatally shooting someone else on the street and taking that person’s car.
Police said someone on K Street knew the perpetrator and helped police identify him. The car he took was found in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where he then carjacked a Toyota, then ordered a rideshare and carjacked that vehicle.
Around 2:30am, a person believed to be the carjacker shot at a Maryland State Police cruiser on D.C. 295 while driving by. The Nissan used was later found abandoned on Prince George’s County, and while officers were investigating the abandoned car, a man walked up to them with a firearm, and he was killed by police, the Post said.
In 2016, the District of Columbia appointed Gill to be the Republican on the city’s Board of Elections. He served three terms until July 2020. Ahead of a confirmation hearing, the City Council noted Gill’s accomplished record in politics. He was the chief operating officer of the CFTC from January 2017 to July 2019. He was also chief of staff to former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo and was the Chief Regulatory Reform Officer responsible for an agency-wide review of regulations.
Prior to that, he was a lawyer at Crowell & Moring and a vice president of a trade association. In the 1990s, he worked for the Bush-Quayle presidential campaign as deputy directory, as well as for a Republican senator and congressman. He held a top secret security clearance.
The DC Council highlighted his compassion for others and his bipartisan collegiality. He once served as executive director of the Ripon Education Fund, a nonpartisan nonprofit seeking cooperation between the U.S. and Europe. He played a key role in how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac handle mortgages. “During Mr. Gill’s tenure, the agency concluded its first ever Collective Bargaining Agreement with its union; instituted a new pay and performance system with the goal of addressing gender and other inequities in pay; and instituted a diversity-focused internship program,” the DC Council said at the time. Gill is currently vice president at the Housing Policy Council.
Carjackings in DC more than doubled in 2023 to nearly 1,000. The crime spree in D.C. has seen an FBI agent carjacked, a Democrat congressman carjacked outside his apartment, and multiple congressional staffers assaulted. Three people attempted to carjack a Secret Service vehicle that was guarding the granddaughter of President Joe Biden.