FedEx Worker Fatally Shot Nonprofit Founder as He Slept Beside Wife, Cops Say

DonorSee
DonorSee

As a FedEx employee headed to his shift at Dulles International Airport on Tuesday, he was stopped by Virginia airport police. It was at that point he learned officers were arresting him over the death of 32-year-old Gret Glyer, a nonprofit CEO and father of two young children who had been found shot in his bed last week.

The package worker, a 33-year-old man from Arlington named Joshua Danehower, reacted calmly and was taken into custody without incident, authorities with the City of Fairfax said Wednesday.

It appears as though Danehower acted alone, Captain Jeff Hunt, the commander of the City of Fairfax Police Department’s criminal investigations division, said at a press conference announcing the arrest. Danehower has been charged with second-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a crime.

<div class="inline-image__credit">City of Fairfax Police Department</div>
City of Fairfax Police Department

Early Friday morning, patrol officers responded to an emergency call reporting that someone had been shot inside Glyer’s Fairfax home. Inside, officers found Glyer, the founder of the fundraising platform DonorSee, dead from multiple gunshot wounds. A preliminary investigation revealed that his wife, Heather, had been asleep beside him at the time of the shooting.

“Gret was my best friend and an incredible husband and father,” Heather, who married Glyer in 2018, said in a statement on Wednesday. “He had an amazing heart for helping the people who need it most, and I know that legacy will live on.”

There has not been a reported homicide in Fairfax, a city of more than 20,000 people, since 2008, according to WTOC.

Danehower was identified by Fairfax authorities as a potential suspect in Glyer’s killing after “someone came forward” with a tip, Hunt said.

Investigators have not yet established a motive in Glyer’s death. It appeared as though Danehower was “an acquaintance of the family,” according to the police captain, who added that authorities were looking into a potential connection the men may have had through their church.

To which church Glyer belonged is unclear, but a friend on Facebook announced that his memorial service would be held at The Falls Church Anglican on Friday.

Glyer founded DonorSee in 2016, according to the company’s website, in order to create a “giving platform” allowing contributions to be handed over “directly to people in need,” with a particular focus on alleviating poverty and famine in Africa. The company, which employs roughly 15 people, also provides donors with video updates showing how their funds are being used.

On a DonorSee page set up to help Glyer’s family, a statement was posted grieving his loss as “a courageous and kind leader, who treated everyone like family... he always had a positive attitude that encouraged you to push a little harder, do a little more, and smile a little bigger.”

The interim chief of the platform, Owen O’Doherty, told The Washington Post in a Wednesday interview that he did not not know Danehower.

According to his LinkedIn profile and online obituary, Glyer had moved in 2013 to become a teacher at a Bible school in Malawi, an East African nation, after several years spent working at Enterprise Rent-A-Car. While there, he had founded a nonprofit called Housing for Orphans and Widows in Malawi, which worked to construct homes in rural areas.

“As anyone who has ever come into contact with Gret will tell you, he was an amazing light and a spirit of buoyant optimism with a quick wit, a big personality, and a great vision to make the world a better place for those less fortunate,” O’Doherty wrote in a separate Facebook tribute.

“And what a difference he made.”

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