South Florida’s Rob Hiaasen among victims
‘There was no finer human being, and no finer father’
Novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen’s brother was among those killed Thursday in a newsroom shooting in Annapolis, Maryland, his family confirmed.
Rob Hiaasen was deputy managing editor and a columnist at The Capital newspaper where he was hired in 2010. He was 59.
“There was no finer human being, there just wasn’t,” Rob Hiaasen’s widow, Maria, said Thursday night. “And certainly no finer father and he was a damn fine journalist too.”
The Hiaasens grew up in Plantation where Rob graduated from Plantation High School before attending the University of Florida. He previously worked at the Palm Beach Post and for 15 years at the Baltimore Sun.
This last spring the father of three taught his first reporting course at the journalism school of the University of Maryland. He was looking forward to the fall term, Maria Hiaasen said.
“This was a targeted attack on The Capital Gazette,” Acting Anne Arundel County Police Chief William Krampf told reporters at an 8 p.m. news conference.
Five people were confirmed dead and two suffered superficial injuries, Krampf said.
“He went into that building to kill people,” Lt. Ryan Frashure, of the Anne Arundel County Police Department, said.
The gunman, a Maryland resident identified as Jarrod Ramos, 38, has been taken into custody and is currently being questioned but is not cooperating with authorities. He had a longrunning dispute with the paper.
Investigators are looking into social media threats that “indicated violence” sent to the newspaper possibly by the shooter as recently as Thursday afternooon, Krampf said.
Tweets from a crime reporter at the paper, Phil Davis, put the terror into first-person.
"Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees," he tweeted. "Can't say much more and don't want to declare anyone dead, but it's bad."
In another tweet Davis said: "There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you're under your desk and then hear the gunman reload."
Carl Hiaasen’s agent, Esther Newberg, confirmed Rob Hiaasen’s death in a tweet: “Rob Hiaasen was murdered in the Maryland shooting today. He loved journalism -- brother of Carl Hiaasen. Devastating.”
The Capital is owned by the Baltimore Sun, a sister paper of the South Florida Sun Sentinel.