On Saturday, Heather McGuire went to a Rockville court commissioner and said she feared for her life. Her estranged husband, she said, threatened her and lurked outside her house.
“This has been going on for many years and has been escalating,” McGuire, 36, wrote in a criminal complaint. “My children believe he is gonna kill me.”
(Courtesy Montgomery County Police) - Philip J. Gilberti
More crime and safety news
Woman walking on median in Montgomery fatally injured when van is struck by car and jumps curb.
The head of internal investigations in the Maryland corrections department, is resigning to take a federal job.
At hearing, Montgomery County victims describe the terror they felt. Sanders gives an emotional apology.
Three days later, police say, Philip Gilberti, 51, made good on his threat, allegedly shooting McGuire while the two were inside a van on Connecticut Avenue, then pushing her body onto the road.
After launching a massive manhunt, police late Tuesday found a dead man they identified as Gilberti in a house in Rockville. Gilberti, who had been charged in a warrant with first-degree murder in McGuire’s death, apparently killed himself, said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger.
Police officers were searching for Gilberti in a neighborhood off of Rockville Pike by late afternoon, Manger said. Gilberti, a one-time boxer, apparently had been threatening people all day by telephone, including people in his own family, Manger said. Police used those sources to help determine his whereabouts.
When efforts to make contact with Gilberti failed Tuesday night, police sent in a robot. About 10:30 p.m., a tactical team went inside and found his body on the floor, Manger said.
The Saturday complaint by Gilberti’s wife followed years of trouble between the couple, who were married in 2009 and were going through a divorce, according to court records. In the three days before the shooting, Gilberti was twice taken into custody after allegedly threatening McGuire. Both times he was released on bond on orders that he remain away from her.
But about 9:40 a.m. Tuesday, police think the pair were together, driving south on Connecticut Avenue in a gray or green van. Witnesses told police that a man and woman in the van seemed to have some sort of altercation, Manger said. At least one witness reported that it looked like the woman tried to get out but that the man pulled her back in and shot her, he said. After the woman fell to the road, the van sped off.
Bystanders, and later police officers, administered first aid as McGuire lay in the street, but she died at the scene.
In court papers, McGuire had said she and Gilberti have three children. Police said none of the children have been harmed.
The recent tension between McGuire and Gilberti appeared to flare early Saturday, when a police officer was called to a home on Hallet Place in the Aspen Hill area, where McGuire was with a friend, according to court papers.
Inside, McGuire told the officer that Gilberti, who court papers say is 6-foot-2 and 285 pounds, had come to the home, banged on the door and screamed her name, according to arrest documents. McGuire also told the officer she thought Gilberti had placed a tracking device on her van because he kept showing up at places he couldn’t have known she’d be, according to the records.
She told the officer she was “very scared” of Gilberti. The officer confirmed that she had an active restraining order against him. Officers arrested him a short time later at a McDonald’s on Rockville Pike.
The Post Most: LocalMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Loading...
Comments