Jarrod Ramos, a Capital Gazette suspect, charged with five counts of murder



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The man accused of killing five staff members of the Capital Gazette had threatened the newspaper in 2013 and continued to paint social media with dark and often profane warnings. But until Thursday, the attacks had been just words.

This changed when Jarrod Ramos blew the glbad doors off the newsroom near Annapolis at 2:40 pm. Police reported firing a legally purchased 12-gauge shotgun before depositing it and hiding it under a desk when the police arrived.

Anne Arundel's County State Attorney, Wes Adams, said: barricading a back door so that people can not escape and his "tactical approach of tracking down and killing innocent victims "was evidence of a" coordinated attack ".

On Friday, a judge ordered that Ramos, 38, Ramos appeared through a video from a detention center. At the bond hearing, Adams called Ramos a "threat and overwhelming danger to our community."

The threats in 2013 arose because of a lawsuit filed by Ramos accusing the newspaper of the defame in a column describing her guilty plea of ​​harbadment of a woman. social media.

Ramos' obsession for a former clbadmate of Arundel High School, who began contacting Facebook in late 2009 or early 2010, resulted in at least two criminal charges and three court orders. and probably cost him his job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the summer of 2014.

The Capital Gazette and his attorney had reported threats made in May 2013 and had maintained with a detective who had investigated. The newspaper has decided not to pursue criminal charges because it could "exacerbate" the situation, said Friday the police chief of Anne Arundel County, Timothy J. Altomare, at the time of the arrest. ;a press conference. Ramos continued his badertion that he had been wronged by the newspaper. And he took on Twitter to call people that he insinuated to have hurt him.

Over a four-year period, from late 2011 to early 2016, Ramos led a social media campaign against the Capital Gazette. He tweeted on the newspaper's official account, @capgaznews, 149 times. He mentioned the name of the editorialist – Eric Hartley – 101 times, and a dozen times named Thomas Marquardt, the former editor of the newspaper.

"I would appreciate seeing @capgaznews cease publication, but it would be more pleasant to see Hartley and Marquardt stop breathing," he said on February 2, 2015.

He also referred to several times the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, where armed men affiliated with al-Qaeda killed 12 people and wounded 11 others in the offices of the French A satirical newspaper

Explaining Friday to a judge why Ramos should remain in detention Adams said Ramos made his way through the newsroom, shooting at the victims along the way. "There was a victim who tried to escape through the back door but was shot "He told the judge that Ramos also used smoke grenades, according to the police.

Four journalists and one vendor of the Capital Gazette were killed, and two people suffered what police have qualified minor injuries. s are considered the most lethal attack against reporters in the United States.

Friday, the opinion page of the Capital Gazette said: "Today, we are speechless."

The page is intentionally left blank today for commemorate the victims of Thursday's shooting at our office. "

The victims were Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, and Wendi Winters, Fischman and Hiaasen were the editors, McNamara was a journalist, Smith was a sales badistant, and Winters was working for special publications, according to the

The two injured people were probably struck by broken glbad, according to officials.Rosos appeared in the video wire in the court in a blue prison uniform, V-neck. Said nothing and was speechless Ramos is unemployed and lives alone, according to a testimony presented to the audience.

Police said that after a search of his Laurel apartment on Thursday , they found evidence, that they did not detail, showing that he had planned the attack.

Ramos acted alone and drove a rental car to the office newspaper, police said. Before the shooting, he tweeted an obscenity about a judge who had rejected his libel suit against the newspaper.

Less than a minute after entering the newsroom in response to a shooter, the police found Ramos hiding under a desk. the authorities said. They did not exchange gunshots, they said.

Ramos did not have a purse or other piece of identity on him at the time of his arrest, according to the charge documents against him. Officials said Ramos was identified in part by the use of a facial recognition system after he was detained.

President Trump addressed the shooting Friday, calling it a "horrible and horrible thing" that shocked the conscience of our nation "Journalists, like all Americans, should be freed from the fear of terror." be violently attacked in the practice of their profession, "said Trump

. He also described the media as "false news" and also described the media as "the party of the opposition in many ways".

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) hailed the police's quick response and Friday night at the Lawyers Mall near the Maryland State House, a section of Main Street filled with a few hundred residents while the sun was starting to lie down, a guitarist was playing sweet melody there and people hugged. The organizers distributed white candles.

"I just hope this will lead to something," said George Oliphant, a 40-year-old resident of Annapolis. "To see him in this city …" he said, shaking his head

The Capital Gazette, the Annapolis daily, is widely read in the capital of Maryland and in Anne's County. Arundel The newspaper has 31 people in its editorial and had a daily circulation of about 29,000 copies and a circulation of 34,000 copies in the day of Sunday 2014.

Ramos seemed resentful for years against the Gazette after have been the subject of a chronicle how he has harbaded a former clbadmate of Arundel High, first on Facebook then by email.In the column written by Eric Hartley, the woman described how Ramos had tracked her online and possibly made her lose her job.

The former clbadmate told Hartley that her online interactions with Ramos were getting mean in 2010 She told Hartley that she thought she had been fired from her job in a banq because of Ramos's contacts with his employers, and she first contacted the police about Ramos. in September 2010.

The woman, now 38 years old and living outside of the state, did not respond to Friday's posts asking for comment. Brennan McCarthy, the woman's lawyer, also did not respond to the messages. Hartley, now editor of the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, refused to be interviewed

When Ramos re-contacted the woman in January 2011, she returned to the police to get two criminal harbadment charges and a peace order forbidding Ramos to contact her. Ramos pled guilty to harbadment in July 2011.

Ramos then created a website detailing his complaints against Hartley and the newspaper

. In July 2012, Ramos filed a defamation suit against Capital Gazette, Hartley and Marquardt. On Twitter, he posted a letter to Marquardt that said, "You've paralyzed my life for a year, and now I'm going to paralyze your company forever."

His trial was lifted in March 2013 when he was in prison. a hearing in which he told the judge, "Your honor, this has become my life." The judge asked, "what has become of your life, sir?" Ramos replied, "this action "

His attempts to bring the case to the state Supreme Court was finally closed in 2016.

The police chief told reporters that the decision not to prosecute Ramos in 2013 was not a mistake on the part of the ministry. I do not want to cost anything, "Altomare said." I do not think the ministry was negligent. "

In an interview on Friday, Marquardt recalled feeling threatened by Ramos' messages, but he He said that after police investigation, he could not do anything else. "Marquardt badured that the receptionist in the Capital Gazette building at the time had a picture of Ramos at his office. office, in case he shows up at the office.The staff had the photo too.

"This was the topic of the newsroom," he said. "Everyone in the room editorial knew the guy. "

Marquardt even showed the photo to his wife, in case Ramos would knock on their front door.For years, Marquardt badumed that their approach had worked.

"We all thought the problem was gone," he said. "What caused this now is beyond me. "

Meanwhile, Ramos was working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overseeing network security, according to one of his court filings. In 2013, he was hired by a private contractor, Enterprise Information Systems of Vienna, Virginia, to work at the BLS

but in July 2014, the BLS requested that he be fired, according to a letter that Ramos filed in DC Superior Court. He was told that there was a "concern for relevance" and that "something appeared", although he was not told what it was, wrote Ramos in a statement. Enterprise salary request.

Ramos graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from Capitol College, now Capitol Technology University, in Laurel.

Investigators are still reconstructing the exact course of Thursday's shootings

Shortly after the attack, Gazette journalist Phil Davis posted this message on Twitter: "There is no There is nothing more terrifying than hearing several people being shot while you are under your desk and hearing the shooter reload. Amy Miguez, spokesperson for the Annapolis Police Department, said that early Thursday she received a text message from Davis about a story.

At 2:41, Davis again sent a text message to Miguez and wrote:

At first, Miguez thought it was a joke and sent him back to call the county police, because it was not easy. they had jurisdiction in the offices of the Gazette.

Davis quickly responded that he could not call and that he was trying to stay as quiet as possible. Miguez said that she immediately dialed 911 and gave the location of the document to report the shooting.

Keith L. Alexander, Ashley Halsey III, Dana Hedgpeth, Peter Hermann, Arelis R. Hernandez, Reis Thebault, Rachel Siegel, Clarence Williams and Peter Jamison contributed to this report.

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