Capital Gazette shooting suspect held without bond on five counts of murder

The Annapolis community reacts to the loss of five people who were killed when a shooter opened fire at the Capital Gazette on June 28. (Allie Caren, Jordan Frasier/The Washington Post)

By Dana Hedgpeth and Ashley Halsey IIIJune 29 at 4:23 PM

The man accused of killing five Capital Gazette staff had threatened the newspaper in 2013 but then “went dark,” police said. Until Thursday.

Shortly before Jarrod Ramos blasted out the glass doors of the newsroom near Annapolis at about 3 p.m., he sent another threat on social media, police said, and then unleashed his rampage, shooting with a legally purchased 12-gauge pump-action shotgun until he finally laid it down and hid under a desk as police arrived.

Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Wes Adams said Ramos’s actions, including barrricading a back door so people could not escape and his “tactical approach of hunting down and shooting the innocent victims,” was evidence of a “coordinated attack.”

On Friday, a judge ordered Ramos of Laurel to remain detained and ordered him held without bond on five counts of murder as Ramos appeared via a video feed from a detention center.

At the bond hearing, Adams called Ramos an “overwhelming threat and danger to our community.”

The Capital Gazette and its lawyer had reported the May 2013 threats and spoke with a detective who investigated. The newspaper decided not to pursue criminal charges because it might “exacerbate” the situation, Anne Arundel County Police Chief Timothy J. Altomare said Friday during a news conference.

The threats came amid a lawsuit Ramos filed accusing the paper of defaming him through a column describing his guilty plea to harassing a woman over social media. He lost the defamation case.

Adams said Ramos worked his way through the office, shooting victims along the way. “There was one victim that attempted to escape through the back door but was shot,” he told the judge. He also used smoke grenades, police said.

Four journalists and a sales associate for the Capital Gazette died and two people suffered what police called minor injuries. The shootings are believed to be the deadliest attack on journalists in the United States in decades.

Ramos appeared in the video feed in court in a blue, v-neck prison uniform. He said nothing and was expressionless. He stared at the camera.

Ramos is unemployed and lives alone, according to testimony presented at the hearing.

John Cusumano described his neighbor, who opened fire at the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis June 28, as "quiet." (Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

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

Ramos acted alone and drove a rental car to the newspaper office, police said. Within about a minute of entering the newsroom, police found Ramos beneath a desk, authorities said. No shots were exchanged, they said.

According to Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh, the social media message Ramos allegedly posted shortly before the attack said “something like ‘leave me alone’ or ‘leave me the hell alone.’”

He said it was not clear if that message from Ramos was directed at the Capital Gazette or “at the world.”

On Friday, the opinion page of the Capital Gazette read, “Today we are speechless.”

It went on, “This page is intentionally left blank today to commemorate 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 editors, McNamara was a reporter, Smith was a sales assistant and Winters worked for special publications, according to the newspaper’s website.

The two people injured were likely hit by broken glass, according to officials.

[The lives lost in the Capital Gazette shooting]

Schuh said in an interview Friday that Ramos had a “long-standing grievance” with the newspaper and had filed lawsuits against the paper and “lost them all.”

Ramos lost a defamation case against the paper in 2015 over a 2011 column he contended defamed him. The column provided an account of Ramos’s guilty plea to criminal harassment of a woman over social media.

Ramos had not been cooperative with investigators and “hasn’t said much the whole time,” Altomare said Friday. He had no wallet or other identification on him at the time, according to the charging documents filed against him.

Officials said Ramos was identified using a facial recognition system after he was in custody .

President Trump addressed the shooting Friday calling it a “horrific, horrible thing” that “shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief.”

“Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job,” Trump said.

The president has previously called the news media “the enemy of the American people.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) commended the quick police response. On Friday, he ordered Maryland flags to be flown at half-staff.

“It’s a tragic situation, but there were some very brave people who came in and kept it from being worse, and the response time was incredible,” Hogan said. .

The Capital Gazette, Annapolis’s daily newspaper, is widely read in Maryland’s capital and in surrounding Anne Arundel County. The paper promotes itself as one of the oldest publishers in the country, with roots dating to the Maryland Gazette in 1727.

The paper has 31 people on its editorial staff and had a daily circulation of about 29,000 and a Sunday circulation of 34,000 as of 2014.

[Rebecca Smith, sales assistant remembered as an upbeat colleague]

On Friday’s edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Keith Cyphers — whose sales office is across the hall from the Gazette’s — recalled the shooting scene.

He said he was on the phone with a client and heard an “incredibly loud noise” and thought it was possibly an explosion.

When he leaned from his desk and looked out into the hallway and into the Gazette’s office and lobby, he saw that the newspaper office’s glass door was gone, he said.

“It was broken into a million pieces in the hallway,” Cyphers said. Then he saw the gunman “holding a black shotgun.”

“It was up against his chest,” Cyphers said. “He was moving through the lobby” of the Gazette. “He was moving while aiming deeper into the office.”

[Annapolis residents read — and mourn — their hometown paper]

Ramos seemed to carry a grudge for years against the Gazette after he was the subject of a column describing how he harassed a former classmate from Arundel High School, first on Facebook and then through emails. Ramos pleaded guilty in July 2011 to harassment. In a column written by Eric Hartley several days later, the woman described how Ramos had stalked her online and perhaps caused her to lose her job.

Ramos then apparently created a website that detailed his complaints against Hartley and the newspaper. Hartley is no longer at the Gazette and now works as an editor at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va.

The chief told reporters the decision not to pursue charges against Ramos at the time was not a misstep by the department.

“Every day we talk to people who don’t want to make charges,” Altomare said. “I don’t feel the department was negligent in any way.”

[Rob Hiaasen, a ‘great colleague and real craftsman,’ slain in Maryland shooting]

A spokesman for the Department of Labor said that Ramos worked as a contractor for an IT company hired by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that he was terminated in 2014. The spokesman did not know if he was terminated by the contractor or the bureau, or how long Ramos had worked there. Ramos’s lawyer said in 2011 that he had been working at the bureau since 2005.

Ramos graduated in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Capitol College, now Capitol Technology University, in Laurel.

Investigators are still piecing together exactly how Thursday’s shooting unfolded.

The shooting began about 3 p.m. in a brown five-story office building just outside downtown Annapolis. It sits about four miles west of Maryland’s statehouse.

The newsroom is on the first floor of the office building and is easily accessible from the main entrance, according to a local politician.

[John McNamara, killed in Maryland shooting, remembered as a mentor to young journalists]

Shortly after the attack, Gazette reporter Phil Davis posted this message on Twitter: “There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.”

[Gerald Fischman, editorial page editor, known for dedication and quiet demeanor]

Police carrying automatic weapons rushed about 170 office workers with their hands above their heads out of the building to a department store across the street.

Sgt. Amy Miguez, an Annapolis Police Department spokeswoman, said that early on Thursday she received a text message from Davis and that she referred the reporter to county police when he said he was working on a story jurisdictional lines between city and county police and needed help to get it straight.

At 2:41, Davis texted Miguez again and wrote: “Help. Shooting at office.”

Miguez initially thought it was a joke and again referred him to call county police, because they have jurisdiction at the Gazette offices.

Davis quickly responded that he couldn’t call and that he was trying to stay as quiet as possible.

[Wendi Winters, killed in Maryland shooting, devoted more than two decades to community journalism]

Miguez said she immediately dialed 911 and gave the location of the paper to report the shooting.

[Rebecca Smith, sales assistant remembered as an upbeat colleague]

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