Rage against women fuels shooters
Years before Jarrod Ramos sued the Capital Gazette for defamation, before he targeted a specific reporter with hateful emails and online threats, before he was charged with killing five people in the small newspaper’s Annapolis, Md. office last week, one person was living that nightmare every day. She spoke for the first time Monday, giving an interview to the Today show about the harassment she endured.
“I was afraid he could show up at any point, any place... and kill me,” she said.
“I have been tormented and traumatized and terrorized for so long that it has, I think, changed the fiber of my being.”
She didn’t want her full name used; NBC identified her only as Lori and obscured her features.
The threats she detailed in court years ago forced her to move out of her hometown, to leave everyone behind, for her own safety.
If you dig deep enough, this is the root of a number of mass shootings. Whether it’s domestic violence or a failed marriage or a guy who got turned down in high school, a twisted, misogynistic streak helps fuel the violence.
The examples abound: attacked his wife and shot his family’s German shepherd in the head. involved in at least three stalking incidents - vides abortions, Robert Dear was accused of physical abuse by at least two of his three ex-wives. beating her for things like not finishing the laundry. despondent after a breakup in a turbulent relationship, and one school official told the New York Times that he was obsessed with another girl “to the point of stalking her.” left a manifesto explaining in sickening - ment for all the women who rejected him.
Within five hours of those first shots that shattered the newsroom’s glass doors, we were reading the details of the column and lawsuit that launched Ramos’s vendetta with the Gazette.
when he pursued an old classmate online.
who was kind to him in the cruel ecosystem of high school.
She didn’t remember him, but was nice and responded.
Quickly, online conversation became cruel and threatening when she didn’t respond the way he wanted her to.
“But when it seemed to me that it was turning into something that gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, that he seems to think there’s some sort of relationship here that does not exist... I tried to slowly back away from it, and he just started getting angry and vulgar to the point I had to tell him to stop,” the woman told the judge, according to the column that Capital Gazette.
send me things and basically tell me, ‘You’re going to need restraining order now.’ ‘You can’t make me stop. I know all these things about you.’ ‘I’m going to tell everyone about your life.’”
Ramos turned his white-hot anger on the and the newspaper. Ramos lost the defamation suit he filed.
There’s the pattern: abuse, denial, embarrassment, rage.
Texas, just six weeks ago, said Sadie Ro people killed in another school massacre.
I know you’re losing track of them. This is the one that happened in May.
the third wheel. Remember those arrangements?
- come three, and it’s awkward sometimes?
According to the mom, who told me, through fresh, Sunday-morning tears, Dimitrios Pagourtzis made a move on his
had forced himself on Shana, he tried to kiss her,” she said. “She is extremely shy, when you talk to her, she’d look at the floor and shy.”
Shana rejected Dimitrios, grossed out that her best friend’s boyfriend tried that.
That rejection, Rodriguez said, turned into four months of harassment.
Sometimes it was so bad that she’d call her mom just before art class – the class she shared with the boy – pretending to be sick so she could get picked up and not face him.
one day and loudly told him to leave her alone. It was humiliating for him, she said.
The shooting followed. It was in the art room.
“My daughter is the only one that got shot Rodriguez said.
“Listen to your kids. You think that’s not going to happen, then it does. Listen, listen.”