ANNAPOLIS, Maryland –Police said the shooting at a Maryland newspaper that killed five people was a “targeted attack on The Capital Gazette.”
Bill Krampf is the acting police chief for Anne Arundel County. In a news conference Thursday at 5 p.m. PDT, he said a white male in his late 30s has been arrested in connection with the shooting.
Krampf said the shooter used canisters of smoke grenades when he entered.
A law enforcement official says the suspect in the Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper shooting has been identified as Jarrod W. Ramos. The official was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to share details.
In addition to the five deaths, he said, two people were injured. He described the injuries as superficial.
Phil Davis, a reporter who covers courts and crime for the paper, tweeted that the gunman shot out the glass door to the office and fired into the newsroom, sending people scrambling for cover under desks.
“A single shooter shot multiple people at my office, some of whom are dead,” he wrote.
Davis added: “There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.”
Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees. Can't say much more and don't want to declare anyone dead, but it's bad.
— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC)
There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you're under your desk and then hear the gunman reload
— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC)
Ok, I was not tweeting from under my desk. I was already safe when I started tweeting
— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC)
The gunman, whose name was not immediately released, was believed to have used a shotgun, according to a U.S. official who was briefed on the investigation but not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The gunman was not carrying any identification, authorities said.
“The shooter has not been very forthcoming, so we don’t have any information yet on motive,” Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh said. “To my knowledge, there was no verbal aspect to the incident where he declared his motives or anything else, so at this point we just don’t know.”
The attacker had mutilated his fingers in an apparent attempt to make it harder to identify him, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity. The official said investigators still managed to identify him through facial recognition.
Krampf disputed this at the 5 p.m. news conference, saying the police had no information about fingerprints or facial recognition technology in connection with the case.
Anne Arundel County Police Lt. Ryan Frashure had told an earlier news conference that police recovered what they believe to be an explosive device from the building housing The Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis. Krampf said the “device” comprised the canisters of smoke grenades.
He said the device “was taken care of,” but didn’t elaborate. He says authorities don’t believe there are any other explosives at the site.
At least two hospitals said they received three patients, two of them with minor injuries not caused by gunshots.
People could be seen leaving the newspaper building with their hands up as police cars and other emergency vehicles converged on the scene. About 170 people in all were evacuated from the building, police said.
In an interview with The Capital Gazette’s online site, Davis said it “was like a war zone” inside the newspaper’s offices — a situation that would be “hard to describe for a while.”
“I’m a police reporter. I write about this stuff — not necessarily to this extent, but shootings and death — all the time,” he said. “But as much as I’m going to try to articulate how traumatizing it is to be hiding under your desk, you don’t know until you’re there and you feel helpless.”
Davis told the paper he and others were still hiding under their desks when the shooter stopped firing. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why he stopped,” he said.
A gas station employee near the shooting scene described a flood of police activity in the area as he sat tight inside his still-open workplace.
In a phone interview, Carlos Wallace, who works just down the street from the newspaper’s offices, said law enforcement vehicles and ambulances had raced toward the scene with sirens blaring.
“The road is blocked off real good. Itap like dozens of dozens of emergency vehicles, police cars of all types, explosive vehicles, battering ram vehicles, all kinds of stuff,” Wallace said.
The newspaper is part of Capital Gazette Communications, which also publishes the Maryland Gazette and CapitalGazette.com. It is part of the Baltimore Sun Media Group.
The New York Police Department immediately deployed counterterrorism teams to news organizations around the city in a move police said was prompted not by any specific threat but was instead done as a precaution. Police could be seen outside The New York Times, ABC News and Fox News early in the evening.
President Donald Trump said his “thoughts and prayers” were with the victims of the shooting.
Trump said in a tweet that he was briefed on the shooting at The Capital Gazette before departing Wisconsin.
He said, “My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families” and thanked “all of the First Responders who are currently on the scene.”
California Sen. Kamela Harris said she was heartbroken by the shooting.
I'm heartbroken by the shooting at the Capital Gazette. Journalists play such a critical role in our democracy and too often face risk at home and abroad. My thoughts are with their family, their friends, and their paper.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris)
