Newsroom attack leaves enduring wound on capital
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Three years after a mass shooting killed five people at a Maryland newspaper, relief that the gunman has been found criminally responsible is tempered by lingering sorrow among residents of the state’s picturesque capital who vividly recall the attack that shattered their community.
The 2018 rampage at the Capital Gazette was unique in its horror — one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in American history. Yet in numerous other ways, it was painfully similar to other mass shootings in communities across the U.S. And many Annapolis residents have discovered that the searing effects leave a wound that endures.
“I think it hurt a lot of people here, not just in our newsroom. Their local paper was attacked, and we were such a part of this community that it felt like an attack on them,” said Paul Gillespie, the Capital Gazette’s photographer who managed to escape the newsroom during the bloodbath and struggles with posttraumatic stress symptoms.
Thursday’s verdict means that shooter Jarrod Ramos will be sentenced to prison, not a maximumsecurity mental health facility. Prosecutors are seeking five life sentences without the possibility of parole for the killer with a grudge against the local paper.
John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, Wendi Winters, Gerald Fischman and Rob Hiaasen died in the attack.
The jury of eight men and four women needed less than two hours to reject arguments from Ramos’ lawyers and their mental health witnesses that he could not understand the criminality of his actions when he attacked the newsroom on June 28, 2018.
Because Annapolis is an extraordinarily tightknit community, nearly everyone — young and old — was somehow affected by the rampage.
Behind the counter of a book and antique shop on the cobblestone main street, Priscilla Witt described the shooting as a transformative experience for Annapolis.
“Unfortunately, there’s just no getting that innocence back,” Witt said after the jury’s verdict. “The attack really had a huge effect here because Annapolis is a small town, really. I think that’s why it hurt so badly. There was a sense that things won’t ever be the same.”
After the shooting, Annapolis residents held fundraisers and gave employees a roughly 2mile rolling standing ovation when they marched in the July Fourth parade just days after the attack. That generosity has never declined, former and current Capital Gazette staffers say.