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Floral book notes and a journal are left in an improvised memorial at the site where five journalists were shot dead at their press office in Annapolis, Md., Friday, June 29, 2018. A man armed with smoke grenades and A rifle reporters in the building Thursday, killing several people before the police storms the building and stops, according to police and witnesses. (AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana)
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) – Writer Selene San Felice was working on a story when a noisy blow broke the typical office sound of keyboards, phone calls and casual shouts that a story has been completed.
San Felice heard the shots and paused for the back door. It would not open.
He had been barricaded as part of a targeted attack aimed specifically at killing employees of the Capital Gazette. Staff members hid under the desks and did everything they could to keep quiet for fear the gunman would find them.
There were 11 people in the Capital Gazette press room on Thursday. Five were killed. Six other staff in the newsroom were on vacation, away from the office or working for the day. Advertising representatives were in Baltimore for a meeting.
Rob Hiaasen, 59 years old; Gerald Fischman, 61 years old; Wendi Winters, 65; John McNamara, 56 years old; and Rebecca Smith, 34, were killed in the attack. Hiaasen, Fischman, Winters and McNamara were the editors. Smith was a sales associate who worked near the front door. All were loved by their colleagues.
"I heard the first shot and I heard a scream," said San Felice, who hid with Anthony Messenger, a Capital Gazette trainee. "At the second shot and the third shot, I knew what it was, it was at that moment that I took my purse and said," I I knew it was selfish I knew something bad was happening. "
A gunman shot into the office Thursday and fired on the staff of the Capital Gazette The newsroom has a long L-shaped gangway linking the advertising offices, the press room and the office where sports and government journalists are located
Shooter had a clear view of the entire office.
Jarrod Warren Ramos, 38, was charged with five counts of first degree murder and ordered to be detained without bail.
Ramos had a long-standing grudge with the Capital Gazette, which began in July 2011 after the newspaper published a column. LEMENT criminal in which he was involved. Reporters who survived the attack recalled hiding under their desk or rushing to the back door
They heard screams of "No" and "Oh God" just before a rifle shot, then silence. And then another shot.
A reporter – who was close to one of the killed editors – said it sounded like a laborious breathing. Then he stopped.
The writer Phil Davis heard the explosions and remembered thinking that it was a shotgun. His office has a filing cabinet along the alley where the shooter walked, concealing Davis.
A colleague was shot next door. Other reporters – friends with whom he would like to have a drink after work – were hiding a row of desks.
"I heard a woman scream," Davis said. The blows were getting closer as he was going up the driveway to the back door and was firing at people on the way. I knew that someone had been killed or very hurt. There was shooting after reloading. He reloaded the shells individually. I stayed under my desk hoping that he did not hear me. "
Staff Writer Rachael Pacella had received a request from Hiaasen when she heard the shots and immediately went into hiding." She changed her mind and said pauses for the back door but she stumbled and smashed her face on the wall.
She suffered a concussion, a cut in the face and bruises. She was bleeding profusely while she was rushing near San Felice and Messenger who were hiding in the back part of the room.
"The place smelled like gunpowder," says Pacella. "When I was hiding, I saw a flashlight shine on the floor, six feet in front of me. It was terrifying. If it was a policeman, they did not announce themselves. I thought it was the guy.
"Much of that work was about surviving and keeping my breath quiet. I knew that I needed to be as calm as possible. "
Photojournalist Paul W. Gillespie was at his desk editing photos when gunshots were fired.
He hid under his desk and could," he said. He heard his colleagues scream before being shot.
"I was diving under this desk as quickly as possible and, by the grace of God, he did not look there," he said. "I was snuggling, trying not to breathe, trying not to make any noise, and he was shooting at me."
After a break in the shootout – maybe when Davis heard the shooter – Gillespie paused the front door. He jumped over the body of a dead colleague and made it outside.
Police arrived about a minute after the start of the shooting, although the survivors said that she felt longer. They swept the office and gathered Pacella, Davis, Messenger and San Felice. The police moved to the front of the newsroom and left the front door. Pacella was not wearing shoes – she did not remember if she had already removed them or had missed them – so an officer carried her through the broken window of the front door
The officers told them not to not look. 19659005] "Walking towards the front, we had to walk on a publisher," said San Felice.
Davis stated that he was separated from his colleagues after the arrival of the police. He went with another officer to help him access the different parts of the building with his key card. Davis then asked the agent if he could call his phone to call his parents. He had to walk several times on a body.
"A member of my family died of a bullet fired 20 years ago," Davis said. "I did not have to walk on his corpse, it's a different feeling when it happens around you, you're defenseless, you're hopeless, and then walk on the bodies of those people who were shot for something they had nothing to do, it's probably something I could never get out of. San Francisco – who returned to work a day after the shooting – told the editors and to the publishers that she wanted people to know that something had to change, that these homicides could not become another forgotten fact. "19659005] San Felice appeared on CNN's" Anderson Cooper 360 "where she swore and said: "I'm going to need more than a few days of news coverage and some thoughts and prayers because our whole lives have been broken."
These comments have been widely praised, and some of these critics have said that San Felice Friday in messag that she should have died in the attack.
"We should not have to die so that a level of decency is maintained," San Felice said. "We will never meet people like Rob, Gerald, Wendi and John and Rebecca."
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Baltimore Sun reporters Kevin Rector and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed to this report.
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From: The Capital, http://www.capitalgazette.com/
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This document may not be published, distributed, rewritten or redistributed.
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