Maryland shooting: 5 people died at the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting
ANNAPOLIS, Md.: A man armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades burst into a newspaper office in the US city of Annapolis on Thursday, killing five people in what police described as a "targeted attack." Officials said the shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper was carried out by a white adult male resident of Maryland state who was being questioned in custody.
There were five fatalities and two superficial injuries, the acting police chief of Anne Arundel county, Bill Krampf, told a news conference in Maryland's capital. The Baltimore Sun -- which owns the Capital Gazette -- named Rob Hiaasen, the paper's assistant editor, who mentored young journalists and wrote in a "wryly observant" style, as one of the victims of the shooting.
Krampf said that police did not yet know the shooter's motive, but "we know that there were threats sent to the Gazette through social media." "We're trying to confirm what account that was and we're trying to confirm who actually sent them," Krampf added. US media identified the suspected shooter as Jarrod Ramos, whom the Sun said had a long-running dispute with the newspaper over a 2011 story "that covered a criminal harassment case against him."
Here are the updates of the shooting at Capital Gazette office:
Police are treating the shooting as a local incident, with no links to terrorism, a law enforcement source told Reuters. Police did not say why the gunman may have targeted the newspaper or its employees.
The suspect is Jarrod Ramos, 38, of Laurel, the Capital Gazette and Baltimore Sun reported citing law enforcement.
In 2012, Ramos brought a defamation lawsuit against Eric Hartley, formerly a staff writer and columnist with The Capital, and Thomas Marquardt, then editor and publisher of The Capital, according to a court filing, AFP reported.
In 2015, Maryland's second-highest court upheld a ruling in favor of the Capital Gazette and a former reporter who were accused by Ramos of defamation, the Baltimore Sun reported.
In the shade of a car park in Maryland's capital Annapolis, three journalists from the Capital Gazette typed grimly away -- still without news of colleagues killed or injured when a gunman stormed the publication earlier Thursday. "We're putting out a paper tomorrow," vowed Chase Cook, one of six reporters at the daily, where the latest mass shooting to rock the United States left five people dead.
Jimmy DeButts, a Capital Gazette journalist, tweeted that he was "devastated & heartbroken. Numb."
US media identified the suspected shooter as Jarrod Ramos, whom the Sun said had a long-running dispute with the newspaper over a 2011 story "that covered a criminal harassment case against him."
The Baltimore Sun -- which owns the Capital Gazette -- named Rob Hiaasen, the paper's assistant editor, who mentored young journalists and wrote in a "wryly observant" style, as one of the victims of the shooting.
A reporter for the daily, which has roots dating back to the early eighteenth century, tweeted a chilling account of how the "gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees." "There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you're under your desk and then hear the gunman reload," crime reporter Phil Davis said.