Capital Gazette Shooting Suspect Charged With First Degree Murder for Maryland Newsroom Attack

The shooting suspect accused of shooting and killing five people in Annapolis, Maryland‘s Capital Gazette newsroom Thursday was charged with five counts of first-degree murder and held without bail Friday morning, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Anne Arundel County Police said Jarrod Warren Ramos, 38, is being held at the Jennifer Road Detention Center in Annapolis.

In Ramos’ first court appearance, District County Judge Thomas Pryal held him without bail, telling him through a screen from the Jennifer Road Detention Center, “There is a certain likelihood you are a danger.”

The Sun reports that Ramos remained mostly impassive throughout the hearing, blinking at the camera.

Ramos is accused of using a long-arm shotgun to blast through the glass doors at the Capital Gazette Thursday afternoon and gun down five employees in what police are calling a planned attack. Inside the newsroom, he reportedly hid under a desk where police found him.

The man from Laurel, Maryland is charged in killing editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, 59; community correspondent Wendi Winter, 65; editorial page editor Gerald Fischman, 61; sports writer John McNamara, 56; and sales assistant Rebecca Smith, 34. Two other staff members, Rachael Pacella and Janel Cooley, were also injured during the attack and have been released from the hospital.

Anne Arundel County Police Chief Timothy Altomare said Friday morning that police found evidence of planning at Ramos’ apartment and that he used a pump-action shotgun purchased legally about a year ago.

At the same news conference, State’s Attorney Wes Adams said that Ramos barricaded the back door of the buildings in the “coordinated attack.”

“There were two entrances to the offices in which this attack occurred,” Adams said. “The rear door was barricaded. Mr. Ramos then, as I told the judge, entered the front door and made his way through the office where he was shooting victims as he walked through the office.”

“The fellow was there to kill as many people as possible,” Altomare said, confirming that authorities used facial recognition technology to identify him, as he would not identify himself and had damaged his fingertips so police were unable to.

Ramos’ attack was the culmination of a longstanding vendetta against the Capital Gazette that had to do with a 2011 article the newspaper published about him after he pleaded guilty to criminal harassment in a case in which a former high school classmate accused him of stalking her to the point where she had to change her name and move out of the state.

The woman told WBAL-TV that she had warned a former police official years ago that Ramos “will be your next mass shooter,” telling the news outlet, “He’s a f—ing nut job.”