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SEATTLE — A federal prosecutor who headed a prominent gun control group in his spare time was shot in his home and died early Friday. 

Thomas C. Wales, 49, died about 1:15 a.m. Friday at Harborview Medical Center. He had been shot in the neck and the side late Thursday, a hospital spokeswoman said. 

Details about the shooting were sketchy. The Seattle Times quoted unidentified federal sources saying the shots were fired from outside, through a basement window into a home office. 

No arrests had been made, police spokesman Mark Jamieson said. 

A neighbor, Emily Holt, said she heard the shots Thursday night and saw a man walking away. 

“He wasn’t running, just walking real fast. He got into his car,” parked about a block away under a tree and a streetlight, Holt said. 

Wales was a member of the fraud unit in the U.S. attorney’s office here, specializing in prosecution of banking and business crime, spokesman Lawrence Lincoln said. He had been in the office since 1983. 

He also was board president of Seattle-based Washington Ceasefire, a gun-control group that sponsored a failed initiative in 1997 that would have required handgun owners to undergo safety training and use trigger locks on their weapons. 

Attorney General John Ashcroft mourned the “tragic death in the Justice Department family.” 

Gov. Gary Locke said he respected Wales’ “tireless gun-control advocacy and work to prevent violence.” 

His death was “a terrible loss to our movement,” said a statement from Michael T. Barnes, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. 

The National Rifle Association mounted a $2 million campaign against Initiative 676, which had the support of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and other prominent state residents. 

“We don’t know who killed Tom, or why, but we know that our community has lost a kind, compassionate man and ... our nation has lost a courageous leader in the movement against gun violence,” said a statement from Bruce Gryniewski, Ceasefire’s executive director. 

Federal agencies were assisting Seattle police in the investigation. Officials with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms declined to comment. 

Neighbors in the wealthy Queen Anne Hill neighborhood said they heard shots shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday. 

Wales’ former wife, Elizabeth, a former Seattle School Board member, was in Europe with the couple’s adult son and daughter, The Times reported, quoting federal sources. The couple divorced a few years ago but were on friendly terms, neighbors said. The ex-wife continued to maintain an office in the home. 

On the Net: 

Washington Ceasefire: http://www.waceasefire.org