Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s chief of staff Roy McGrath has died after a nationwide manhunt for him ended Monday in a confrontation with the FBI in Knoxville, Tennessee, NBC News reported Tuesday.
McGrath, 53, suffered a gunshot wound and succumbed to injuries, lawyer Joseph Murtha said.
“The FBI has confirmed that Roy succumbed to the injuries inflicted earlier in the evening. It is a tragic ending to three weeks of uncertainty,” Attorney Murtha told CNN in a statement. “I think it is important to stress that Roy never waivered about his innocence.”
The incident comes nearly three weeks after he failed to appear in federal court last month on fraud and other charges, authorities and his lawyer said.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the injury was self-inflicted or whether it occurred in an exchange of gunfire with FBI agents, Murtha said.
But the FBI said in a statement earlier Monday that it was “reviewing an agent-involved shooting which occurred at approximately 6:30 p.m. on Monday, April 3, 2023. During the arrest the subject, Roy McGrath, sustained injury and was transported to the hospital.”
The bureau, the statement said, “takes all shooting incidents involving our agents or task force members seriously. In accordance with FBI policy, the shooting incident is under investigation by the FBI’s Inspection Division.”
The bureau did not provide any additional details on the manhunt.
As reported by NBC News, “McGrath was Hogan’s deputy chief of staff in 2015 before Hogan appointed him to lead the Maryland Environmental Service in December 2016. He briefly returned as Hogan’s chief of staff in 2020 before he resigned amid a backlash over a large severance payout from the service.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland accused McGrath of using his position at the nonprofit public corporation — which provides waste management, recycling and other services to government agencies and the private sector — to enrich himself by fraudulently claiming Hogan had approved the payout.
Federal prosecutors in Maryland also accused McGrath of illegally recording private conversations with officials, falsifying time sheets and directing service funds to a museum where he was a member and to pay for tuition benefits.
