Bystander killed in DC shootout was an Air Force veteran who had experienced homelessness

The victim killed by crossfire in Northwest D.C. Thursday afternoon was an Air Force veteran who previously overcame homelessness.

Lasanta McGill, 62, was the bystander killed in a lunchtime shootout involving three men when a dispute spilled out of a deli on 7^th Street NW near Howard Theatre just after 1 p.m., D.C. police said.

McGill spent six years in the Air Force and had a job for 24 years before he was laid off in 2015 and lost everything.

“I started sleeping under a bridge off of M Street SE, Southwest, excuse me,” he said in a video for Friendship Place, a non-profit that works with homeless veterans. “And I slept under the bridge for about a year-and-a-half.”

That interview was posted online in 2019. It’s unclear where McGill had been since.

Several people in the neighborhood where he was shot said they knew him to hang out in the area and sell single cigarettes to make money.

Friendship Place

Police charged 20-year-old Demarcus Barnett for shooting McGill. He was firing at two other gunmen, according to an affidavit. Barnett said the men had just robbed him inside the deli.

Police released pictures of those two other gunmen in a news release on Saturday.

Metropolitan Police Department

Anyone who can identify the two men, or who has knowledge of the shooting, is asked to call police at 202-727-9099 or text your tip to the MPD Text Tip Line at 50411.

Barnett pleaded guilty to carrying a pistol without a license in May and was scheduled to be sentenced in July, according to court files.

“We have way too many people on our streets in the District of Columbia that are carrying illegal firearms that have no business carrying illegal firearms,” D.C. police Cmdr. James Boteler said.

A D.C. police officer working inside Howard University Hospital a few blocks from the shooting spotted Barnett tossing a gun into some bushes and arrested him, according to the affidavit.