A Maryland man was charged with multiple counts of murder on Friday, a day after police say he rampaged through a newsroom in Annapolis with a shotgun and killed five people in one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in U.S. history.
Police identified the suspect as Jarrod Ramos, 38, from Laurel, 40 km west of Annapolis. He faced five counts of first degree murder in Anne Arundel County criminal court where a bail hearing was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) on Friday.
Ramos had a long-standing grudge against the newspaper and unsuccessfully sued it for defamation in 2012 over an article that reported how he harassed a former high school classmate, court records showed.
Firing through glass-door
He is accused of entering the Capital Gazette office on Thursday afternoon and opening fire through a glass- door, hunting for victims and spraying the newsroom with gunfire as reporters hid under their desks and begged for help on social media, police and witnesses said.
Ramos brought a defamation lawsuit in 2012 against Eric Hartley, a former staff writer and columnist with Capital Gazette, and Thomas Marquardt, then its editor and publisher, a court filing showed.
Neither Mr. Hartley nor Mr. Marquardt is still employed by the paper or were at its office on Thursday.
Phil Davis, a Capital Gazette crime reporter, recounted how he was hiding under his desk along with other newspaper employees when the shooter stopped firing, the Capital Gazette reported on its website.
The newsroom looked “like a war zone,” he told The Baltimore Sun. “I don’t know why he stopped.”
Capital Gazette runs several newspapers out of its Annapolis office. They include one of the oldest newspapers in the United States, The Gazette, which traces its origins back to 1727.