5 killed at newspaper
Police say gunman used a shotgun
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A gunman opened fire in a targeted attack on a newspaper office in Maryland’s capital Thursday, killing five people and wounding others before being taken into custody in what appeared to be one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in U.S. history, police and witnesses said.
Police said the suspect was a white man in his late 30s whose rampage at The Capital Gazette followed social media threats directed at the newspaper. Authorities said the man entered the building and “looked for his victims.” He threw smoke grenades and fired a shotgun at his victims, according to Anne Arundel County Acting Police Chief William Krampf.
“This person was prepared today to come in, this person was prepared to shoot people. His intent was to cause harm,”
Krampf said.
According to reports from The Baltimore Sun, police and federal agents gathered late Thursday outside the address of 38-year-old Jarrod W. Ramos. Rich McLaughlin, chief of the Laurel Police Department, said his officers were there as part of the investigation into the shooting at the newspaper, and other sources identified Ramos as the suspect.
In 2012, Ramos filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper and a columnist over a July 2011 story that covered a criminal harassment case against him, the Sun reported
He brought the suit against the columnist, Eric Hartley, naming Capital Gazette Communications and Thomas Marquardt, the paper’s former editor and publisher, as defendants, according to the Sun.
A Twitter page in Ramos’ name on Thursday featured Hartley’s picture as its avatar, and a banner image included photographs of Marquardt and the Capital’s former owner, Philip Merrill.
The page’s bio read: “Dear reader: I created this page to defend myself. Now I’m suing the s--- out of half of AA County and making corpses of corrupt careers and corporate entities,” said the Sun’s report.
Phil Davis, a reporter who covers courts and crime for the paper, tweeted that the gunman shot out the glass door to the office and fired into the newsroom, sending people scrambling for cover under desks.
“A single shooter shot multiple people at my office, some of whom are dead,” he wrote.
Davis added: “There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.”
The attacker had mutilated his fingers in an apparent attempt to make it harder to identify him, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. Another official who also spoke on condition of anonymity said investigators identified the man using facial recognition technology.
At the White House, spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said: “There is no room for violence, and we stick by that. Violence is never tolerated in any form, no matter whom it is against.”
The gunman was believed to have used a shotgun, according to a U.S. official who was briefed on the investigation but not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The gunman was not carrying any identification, authorities said.
“The shooter has not been very forthcoming, so we don’t have any information yet on motive,” Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh said. “To my knowledge, there was no verbal aspect to the incident where he declared his motives or anything else, so at this point we just don’t know.”
Krampf confirmed five deaths and said two people had superficial wounds. Authorities had said earlier that several people were gravely wounded.