Annapolis gunman a stalker, had a feud with newspaper

A man who had once filed a defamation suit against the Capital Gazette newspaper is accused of opening fire into the newsroom and killing five people Thursday.

The shooter, Jarrod W. Ramos (38), had been flagged up to police as ‘the next mass shooter’ by a woman he obsessively stalked to the point where she had to change her name and flee the state.

The harassment had begun with a Facebook message of thanks for being ‘the only person ever to say hello or be nice to him in school’, and escalated over several months.

Ramos unsuccessfully tried to sue Capital Gazette over a 2011 article about the harassment, and spent years threatening the newspaper and its staff on Twitter.

The five victims were named by police as Wendi Winters (65), Rebecca Smith (34), Robert Hiaasen (59), Gerald Fischman (61) and John McNamara (56).

The Police said the newspaper had received threats on social media prior to the deadly shooting. Ramos had unsuccessfully sued the newspaper and one of its former reporters in 2013 for defamation.

A Twitter profile under his name includes frequent tweets about the newspaper and its staff.

Ramos was the subject of a 2011 article – titled ‘Jarrod wants to be your friend’ – after he pleaded guilty to criminal harassment. The article described him as having threatened and harassed a former high school classmate on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Jarrod was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, according to court records. Ramos is scheduled to have a bail hearing on Friday. He had a long history of conflict with the daily, the US media reported. Pyeongtaek (South Korea): US forces in South Korea opened their new headquarters on Friday, on what they called Washington’s biggest overseas base, just weeks after President Donald Trump said he wanted to bring the troops home.

The US and South Korea are treaty allies and for decades US Forces Korea (USFK) have been headquartered in Yongsan, in the centre of Seoul and prime real estate. The two allies agreed as long ago as 1990 to relocate the headquarters to Camp Humphreys, an existing base in Pyeongtaek, around 60 kilometres (38 miles) south of the capital. But the project was delayed for years by resident protests, financial issues and extensive construction work. It was not until 2013 that the first unit transferred across to Camp Humphreys, named after a pilot who died in a helicopter accident.