The day after a gunman stormed into Capital Gazette’s office in Annapolis, killing four journalists and a sales assistant, the newspaper published an edition on Friday morning.
“Today, we are speechless,” the newspaper wrote on its editorial page, which was intentionally left blank to commemorate the victims of the shooting. “Tomorrow this Capital page will return to its steady purpose of offering readers informed opinion about the world around them.”
The paper’s front page read, “5 shot dead at the Capital.”
“Yes, we’re putting out a damn paper tomorrow,” the paper tweeted Thursday.
The police released the names of the five employees killed in the shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper on Thursday evening: editor Rob Hiaasen, sales assistant Rebecca Smith, and writers Wendi Winters, Gerald Fischman and John McNamara.
Friends and family of the victims expressed grief and remembrances in the aftermath of the shooting.
“There was no finer human being, there just wasn’t,” Hiaasen’s widow, Maria, said in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “And certainly no finer father, and he was a damn fine journalist too.”
“I just want people to know what an incredibly gentle, generous and gifted guy my brother was,” Carl Hiaasen told The Washington Post. “He was an unforgettably warm and uplifting presence as a father and brother. But he also had dedicated his whole life to journalism.”
“The Wire” creator David Simon, a veteran of the Baltimore Sun, memorialized him Thursday while criticizing President Trump for calling journalists enemies of the American people.
Simon also remembered his friend McNamara, who he called “a careful, committed and lifelong journalist who first honed his craft as a sports reporter on the University of Maryland Diamondback, where I had the pleasure of working with him.
The shooting suspect was taken into custody and interrogated Thursday night, Annapolis, Maryland police said in a press briefing. Citing law enforcement sources, NBC, CNN and the Baltimore Sun identified the suspect as 38-year-old Jarrod Ramos, a man who had a longstanding dispute with the paper stemming from its coverage of a criminal case in which Ramos was convicted of harassing a woman who rejected his advances.
Some commentators have blamed right-wing politicians and commentators — including President Donald Trump, former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch — for inciting the shooting with their calls for violence against journalists.