Newsroom’s door blocked before attack
‘We can’t fathom’ rampage motive, police chief says
The suspect in the shooting deaths of five people at a newspaper in Maryland is being held without bond on five counts of murder after surrendering to police at the Capital Gazette.
Police say Jarrod W. Ramos targeted the paper, which he sued over its coverage of his 2011 conviction for harassing a former classmate. A judge threw out his lawsuit, which Ramos unsuccessfully appealed.
Police say Ramos, 38, planned the attack with a pump-action shotgun ahead of time and barricaded a door to prevent people from escaping.
At a court hearing Friday, Judge Thomas Pryal ordered Ramos held without bail. “There is a certain likelihood you are a danger,” he said.
The suspect in the shooting deaths of five people at a newspaper in Maryland planned the attack with a pump-action shotgun ahead of time and barricaded a door to prevent people from escaping, authorities said Friday.
Jarrod W. Ramos, 38, who was identified with facial-recognition technology, is accused of opening fire at the Capital Gazette office in Annapolis on Thursday. In addition to the deaths, two people were wounded.
At a hearing Friday, District Judge Thomas Pryal ordered Ramos held without bail. “There is a certain likelihood you are a danger,” he said.
Anne Arundel County Police Chief Timothy Altomare said Friday that police are still accumulating evidence from the suspect’s car, found near the scene of the shooting, and his Laurel apartment. Altomare said police found planning materials for the attack, but not a manifesto explaining his reasons.
More than 300 officers from city,
“He didn’t run away, but he hid.”
Timothy Altomare Anne Arundel County police chief
county, state and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the shooting. “We’re still putting puzzle pieces together,” Altomare said Friday. “We can’t fathom why that person chose to do this.”
Ramos was identified using facialrecognition technology because of a lag in fingerprint identification, but reports of the suspect altering his fingertips are incorrect, Altomare said.
“We have not been getting cooperation from the suspect,” he said.
The gunman hid rather than getting into a shootout with police.
“The fellow was there to kill as many people as possible. He didn’t run away, but he hid,” Altomare said.
Wes Adams, Anne Arundel County state’s attorney, called Ramos a danger to society because of evidence that he carefully planned the attack, barricaded the back door so people couldn’t escape and used “a tactical approach in hunting down and shooting the innocent people.”
“There was one victim who attempted to escape through the door and was shot,” Adams said.
President Donald Trump said Friday that the shooting shocked the “conscience of the nation and filled our hearts with grief.”
Court documents show Ramos filed a defamation suit against the newspaper in 2012, but a judge threw out the lawsuit, saying Ramos “fails to come close to alleging a case of defamation.” An appeals court upheld the ruling.
Ramos is a graduate of Capitol College in Laurel, which has been known as Capitol Technology University since 2014. He received a bachelor’s of science in computer engineering in August 2006, said Robert Herschbach, a spokesman. The independent four-year university trains engineers and information technology professionals. that frequently enter federal careers.
Ramos was employed by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics as an IT contractor from 2007 to 2014, according to a Labor Department spokesman.
On Thursday evening, authorities surrounded an apartment complex connected to Ramos in Laurel.
William Krampf of county police acknowledged that threats had been made as recently as Thursday to the newspaper back via social media that “indicated violence,” but it was not clear whether they came from the suspect.
The five victims, all employees of the newspaper, were assistant editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, special publications editor Wendi Winters, writer John McNamara, editorial page editor Gerald Fischman and sales assistant Rebecca Smith.
Crime reporter Phil Davis, who took cover under a desk, described the scene to The Baltimore Sun, which owns the newspaper, as “like a war zone.”
Anthony Messenger, an intern, told NBC’s “Today” show Friday that he was in the office when the gunman opened fire, and that nothing could have prepared him for it. He said he heard shots but could not see the gunman.
Later, Messenger said walking out of the building was chaotic.
“Unfortunately we had to pass two bodies of our colleagues, which was something that nobody should ever have to stomach,” he said. “I think just the sheer chaos of it all, people were too caught up in trying to get to safety to realize ‘OK, this is a man that we have a prior history with.’ ”