Shooter of newspaper staff charged with five murder counts
A man with a long grudge against Maryland’s capital newspaper was charged Friday with five counts of firstdegree murder after police said he shot his way into the newsroom, killing four journalists and a staffer and wounding two others.
Jarrod Warren Ramos was swiftly arrested, interrogated and jailed pending a 10:30 a.m. hearing in Annapolis. A court document classified him as “recalcitrant.” Investigators said he was unco-operative. A spokeswoman for the public defender’s office said she had no comment.
Acting Police Chief William Krampf of Anne Arundel County said the gunman “looked for his victims” Thursday in the newsroom of The Capital Gazette in Annapolis. “This person was prepared today to come in, this person was prepared to shoot people,” Krampf said.
Ramos, 38, has a well-documented history of harassing the paper’s journalists.
wHe filed a defamation suit in 2012 that was thrown out as groundless and often railed against them in profanitylaced tweets.
Police say surveillance video recorded the attack, which began with a shotgun blast that shattered the glass entrance of the open newsroom. Journalists crawled under desks and sought other hiding places, describing agonizing minutes of terror as they heard his footsteps and the repeated blasts of the weapon.
Officers responded in about 60 seconds and arrested him without firing a shot as he too “attempted to conceal himself under a desk,” according to his charging documents. They recovered a “long gun firearm” and said he also carried smoke grenades.
Ramos so routinely sent profanity-laced tweets about the paper and its writers that retired publisher Tom Marquardt said he called police in 2013, telling his wife at the time that “this guy could really hurt us.”
In 2015, Ramos tweeted that he’d like to see the paper stop publishing, but “it would be nicer” to see two of its journalists “cease breathing.”
Investigators were reviewing his postings and searching his apartment in Laurel, Maryland, for evidence on what prompted him to escalate from words into deadly action.
“The shooter has not been very forthcoming, so we don’t have any information yet on motive,” Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh said.
Those killed included Rob Hiaasen, 59, the paper’s assistant managing editor and brother of novelist Carl Hiaasen.
Carl Hiaasen said he was “devastated and heartsick” at losing his brother, “one of the most gentle and funny people I’ve ever known.”
Also slain were Gerald Fischman, editorial page editor; features reporter Wendi Winters; reporter John McNamara, and sales assistant Rebecca Smith. The newspaper said two other employees were treated for nonlife threatening injuries.
“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload,” tweeted Phil Davis, the paper’s courts and crime reporter.