US newsroom shooting

Washington, June 29: Five people were killed and two others injured when a man armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades shot through a glass door into the newsroom of a newspaper in the US state of Maryland in a targeted shooting, police said. Jarrod Warren Ramos, the 38-year-old suspect was taken into custody after the attack at the Capital Gazette newspaper’s office in Annapolis on Thursday and was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, according to court records. The attack has been deemed as the deadliest day for journalism in America in several years. Ramos is scheduled to have a bail hearing on Friday. He had a long history of conflict with the daily, the US media reported. 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. Police, who arrived at the scene within a minute of the reported gunfire, apprehended the gunman who was hiding under a desk in the newsroom, according to the top official in Anne Arundel County, where the attack occurred. The five who were killed were Capital Gazette employees: Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, 56, a staff writer; Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales assistant and Wendi Winters, 65, who worked in special publications. Fischman and Hiaasen were editors, McNamara was a reporter, Smith was a sales assistant and Winters worked for special publications. (IANS)