Shooter had prevented escape
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A Maryland man who had a grudge against an Annapolis newspaper barricaded the rear door to prevent people from fleeing as he used a pump-action shotgun Thursday to blast his way through the newsroom of the Capital Gazette, authorities said Friday.
The man, Jarrod W. Ramos, 38, appeared in state District Court by a video feed Friday and was charged with five counts of murder. He was denied bail.
‘‘There is a certain likelihood you are a danger,’’ Judge Thomas Pryal told Ramos, who did not speak and showed no emotion.
State flags were lowered to halfstaff and a vigil was planned for Friday night. At the White House, President Donald Trump, who routinely calls reporters “liars” and “enemies of the people,” said: “Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their jobs.”
Wes Adams, the Anne Arundel County state’s attorney, said one of the victims had tried to escape through a rear door, but Ramos had barricaded it shut.
Earlier Friday, Timothy Altomare, the Anne Arundel County police chief, said Ramos that facial-recognition technology played a crucial role in helping police identify Ramos.
Police first tried to learn his identity through his fingerprints, but the fingerprint-identification system was moving so slowly that police turned to using facial recognition, the chief said. A photo of the suspect was sent to the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, which searched driver’s license photos and mug shots to find a match. County police said reports of the suspect having mutilated his fingertips were not correct.
The 12-gauge pumpaction shotgun used in the shooting was bought legally a year ago, Altomare said.
Ramos, a former information-technology worker for the federal government, had a long-held grudge against the Capital Gazette. He filed a defamation suit against the paper in 2012 after it ran an article about him pleading guilty to harassing a woman — the lawsuit was thrown out by a judge as groundless — and he repeatedly targeted staff members online with menacing, profanity-laced messages.
Police looked into the threats in 2013, but the newspaper declined to press charges for fear of inflaming the situation, Altomare said.
The first-degree murder charges carry a maximum penalty of life without parole.