He ‘tormented’ me
The woman who was stalked and harassed by the Capital Gazette massacre suspect said Monday that she lived in constant fear that he would kill her.
“I would be afraid that he could show up anywhere at any time and kill me,” Jarrod Ramos’ victim, identified only as Lori, told the “Today” show.
“I have been tormented, and traumatized and terrorized for so long that it has, I think, changed the fiber of my being,” she added.
When Lori was first contacted by Ramos, 38, a former classmate at Arundel HS in Gambrills, Md., she didn’t think anything was amiss. Although she didn’t remember him, they exchanged e-mails — until he grew more and more obsessed with her.
“He told me at one point that he was reaching out to me because I was the only person who had been nice to him in high school,” she said.
“All of the sudden, out of nowhere one day, he sent me this really angry e-mail . . . He said something along the lines of he was worried about me, that I hadn’t responded to him in three or four days, what was wrong with me, why was I doing this to him?” Lori said. “And at that point, I kinda took a step back and said, ‘What is going on here?’ ”
Lori recalled that Ramos never asked for her phone number or to even meet in person — but said he started calling her vulgar names and telling her to kill herself on social media.
In 2011, Ramos pleaded guilty to harassing Lori and was sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation.
He later sued the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Md., in 2012 for defamation over an article profiling Lori and detailing the harassment she’d suffered. The case was dismissed.
Lori described how she skipped town when he sued the paper, because she was afraid he’d come after her.
“I used to come home from work and I used to drive by my house every day and pause and make sure nothing looked amiss, make sure my windows didn’t looked cracked, my door wasn’t ajar,” she said.
Last Thursday, Ramos allegedly opened fire inside the Gazette’s newsroom with a pump- action shotgun, killing five people — four journalists and a sales associate — and wounding three. He is being held without bail.
When Lori first heard about the shooting on the news, she was certain who the gunman was even before police did.
“As soon as they said it happened at the Capital newspaper and they couldn’t identify their suspect, I picked up the phone and said, ‘I know who your suspect is,’ ” Lori said.
Meanwhile, President Trump denied requests to lower American flags to half-staff in tribute to the victims, Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley said on Monday.