The Gazette de la Capitale suspect is charged with five counts of murder



[ad_1]

A man victim of a vendetta against a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, was charged with five counts of murder after firing a shot at the glass doors of the editorial and on its employees, killing five people and injuring two others on Thursday afternoon. targeted shooter.

Officials said that Jarrod Ramos, 38, of Laurel carried out the shooting. He is expected Friday morning in the courthouse of Annapolis district.

Local police said the Capital Gazette was targeted, which has increased security in the country's newsrooms. The attack seems to be the deadliest involving reporters in the United States for decades.

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

He continues: "This page is intentionally" He then listed the names of the five victims.

Ramos lost a libel suit against the newspaper in 2015 on a 2011 column that he claimed to defame. The column provided a record of Ramos' guilty plea to a woman's criminal harassment on social media.

Police, who arrived at the scene within one minute of firing, apprehended a Armed man – later Ramos He was found hiding under a desk in the newsroom, according to the top official of Anne Arundel County, where the attack took place.

The police searched an apartment in Laurel, Md., Thursday night.He did not collaborate with investigators Thursday night, officials said.Rosos carried cartridges with smoke grenades that he used in the building, according to the police

"This person was ready "Up next, this person was ready to shoot people," said Deputy Chief of Police Anne Arundel County. "His intention was to cause harm."

Police claimed that all victims were Capital Gazette employees: 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 assistant and Winters worked for special publications, according to the newspaper's website.

Police said the newsroom had recently been threatened with violence by social media. Reporter Phil Davis described the scene as a "war zone" and a situation that would be "difficult to describe for a while," in a report posted on the newspaper's website within 45 minutes of the shooting

. Police invaded the area about four miles west of the state of Maryland to clean up the scene and move more than 170 occupants of the office building into a nearby mall.

"It seems like a sniper" Steve Schuh said. "It does not seem like a particularly well-planned operation."

Laurel Police Chief Richard McLaughlin said the building where Ramos would live was evacuated on Thursday night.

The apartment is in a group of three floors. brick buildings near Highway 1 in Prince George County, about 35 minutes from the Capital Gazette office

Laurel County Police and Anne Arundel and federal officials were on places

It reads in the capital of Maryland and in the county of Anne Arundel.

The newspaper stands as one of the country's oldest publishers, with roots dating back to the Maryland Gazette in 1727.

"Devastated and Depressed." Numb, "The Gazette Editor Jimmy DeButts said on Twitter. "Please stop asking for information / interviews.I am not able to speak, just know @capgaznews reporters and editors give everything they 've got everyday.It' s n & # 's There are no 40-hour weeks, no big pay – just a passion for telling stories of our community. "

Ramos worked at the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to a lawyer who l? represented in 2011, but he

He seemed to hold grudge for years against the newspaper after being the subject of a chronicle describing how he had harassed a former classmate of the Arundel High School, first on Facebook and then via e-mail. Ramos pleaded guilty in July 2011 to the harassment. In a chronicle written by Eric Hartley several days later, the woman described how Ramos had harassed her online and possibly had her lose her job.

Ramos then created a website detailing his complaints against Hartley and the newspaper. Filming began around 3 pm In a five-storey office building located just outside Annapolis downtown,

In an interview with a local affiliate of ABC Television , a man working in a different office said he heard an "incredibly loud bang". his office to see a man surrounded by broken glass holding a gun at the entrance door of the Capital Gazette.

"This guy held what looked like a big shotgun and was crossing the entrance to the Capital Gazette office. "The first helpers entered the building and immediately met a woman with life-threatening injuries and other wounded before finding the suspect under an office," said Schuh. He says that no shot has been exchanged between the man and the police.

Four people died on the scene, and a woman was declared dead at the Medical Center of the University of Maryland, Schuh said. workers with their hands over their heads out of the building at a department store across the street.

Sgt. Amy Miguez, a spokeswoman for the Annapolis Police Department, said that on Thursday morning she had received a text message from Phil Davis and that she had sent the reporter back to the county police. Davis had said that he needed to write a story on the lines of jurisdiction between the city police and the county police to help solve it.

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 replied that he could not call and that he was trying

Miguez said that she immediately dialed 911 and gave the newspaper location to report shooting.

Fears arose in the building while it was heard that there was a gunman. so scared, "said Rayne Foster, who works on the fourth floor." I was very scared. "

Locked in a room with a dozen other people, Foster had sent a text message to his daughter : "There is an active shooter, I love you."

"I was taking deep breaths," she says. "We could hear them bursting out the glass doors and the windows – it was so surreal."

27-year-old Karen Burd was on her fourth day working in a tax litigation firm in the United States. 39 building when a colleague told him that there was a gunman.

find a room in which they could barricade. Soon, the police knocked on the door.

"J & # I began to pray, "she says, tears in her eyes." You just think, 'Will it be my last day?' "

A police brigade has investigated a backpack found near the suspect and contained an unknown device Lt. Col. Ryan Frashure, county police spokesman,

reported that the police had conducted an active shooter training last week

there as fast as they [were] it could have been much worse, "he said. We do not expect this to happen in our community, but I do not think we could have been more ready. "

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan also praised the police's quick response

but there were very brave people who came and made things worse, and the response time was incredible, "said Hogan, standing on the scene with the police and local authorities

. outside Maryland. The New York Police Department said it had "deployed anti-terrorist media teams" in and around the city "as a precaution". The Washington police planned to place two uniformed officers in front of the Washington Post and other media

The Capital Gazette, which has 31 editors, had a daily circulation of about 29,000 copies and a circulation of 34,000 copies in 2014.

Commonly called the capital, the newspaper was founded in 1884 as the evening newspaper. The Baltimore Sun Media Group, owned by Tronc, based in Chicago, purchased the paper in 2014 from Landmark Media Enterprises, based in Norfolk, Virginia. The new owners have converted it into a morning newspaper in 2015.

had belonged in part to Philip Merrill, who was the owner and publisher of Washingtonian magazine

The article draws its Roots of a related article, the biweekly Maryland Gazette, which was founded in 1727 in Annapolis and is one of the oldest periodicals in the United States. One of the first editors of the Maryland Gazette was a protégé of Benjamin Franklin. Anne Catherine Hoof Green, one of the first women to hold such a job in an American newspaper, was editor and publisher.

"Founded by British journalist William Parks, the Maryland Gazette has recorded several achievements during its illustrious history. newspaper says on his website. "In 1767, Anne Catharine Green became the first newspaper publishing house in the country and the newspaper fought the dreaded stamped tax that began the American Revolution."

The Annapolis newspaper is unrelated to the weekly newspaper chain The Washington Suburbs by the Washington Post until 2015.

The Capital Gazette moved to his office on Bestgate Street in September 2014. The newsroom is on the first floor of the building and is easily accessible from the main entrance.

The newsroom is an open space, and "the office would be the only place you could hide," says Buckley.

Buckley says that Annapolis, which has about 39,000 inhabitants, is a small town where officials all know the newspaper's reporters, who cover zoning issues, local crime and even a cat stuck in a tree .

"They do not make a lot of money – maybe $ 30,000 a year," Buckley said. "It is immoral that their lives were in danger."

Clarence Williams, Paul Farhi, Arelis R. Hernandez, Peter Hermann, Reis Thebault, Michael Brice-Saddler, Rachel Weiner and Joe Heim contributed to this report.

[ad_2]
Source link