‘IT’S LIKE A PART OF US HAS BEEN TAKEN’
Annapolis mourns ‘friends, neighbours, colleagues’
FLOWERS, a notebook and a newspaper tied with white ribbon: these are some of the items placed at a makeshift memorial near the newsroom where a gunman shot dead five people in the United States city of Annapolis.
The shooting rocked Annapolis — the capital of Maryland — a city of less than 40,000 residents, where employees of the small local newspaper are known to many.
“The people who worked here are our friends, neighbours, colleagues, so it is like a part of us has been taken with their death as well,” said Christine Feldmann.
“This paper represented everything great about this country: democracy and community. To think someone would try to stop that and murder five innocent people is just horrific and makes me feel hopeless, unfortunately.”
She placed flowers on the memorial in a commercial area dotted with retail stores, restaurants and a lingering police presence following the shooting.
On Thursday, a gunman armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades blasted through the door of the Capital Gazette, then killed four journalists and a sales assistant.
The suspect has been identified as Jarrod Ramos, who had a longstanding grudge against the paper over a 2011 article about a criminal harassment case brought against him by a former classmate.
The shooting hit especially close to home for Mike Driscoll, who worked at the Capital Gazette in the administrative department and as a freelancer.
He said it was “like I lost family”.
In the centre of the city, a postcard-worthy area of cobblestone streets and red brick buildings, Diann Alaiz said she was “shook”, because “Annapolis is safe to me”.
“I never thought something like that would happen here. We are a tight community and it has shaken everyone around here.”
She said it was “heartbreaking” to see the names of the victims in the newspaper a day after the shooting.
“They were the local hometown paper and still are... there is nothing that has changed about that,” said resident Tom Wenger.
The shooting has rekindled the long-running debate over gun control in the US, where the right to bear arms is constitutionally guaranteed.
The shotgun used in the shooting was legally purchased, according to police.
“A firearm (it is) in the national DNA, so they are never going to go away,” Driscoll said.
“But there needs to be responsibility. They do not solve any problems, they just create more.
“If you cannot handle a gun in an honourable, mature way, you should not be allowed to have them.”
However, despite the tragedy, Driscoll said the newspaper would persevere.