Police say it was a grudge carried for seven years.
On Thursday, a shotgun-wielding man blasted his way into the offices of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, and killed five staff members.
According to police, the suspect was acting on a grudge dating back to a 2011 article in which the newspaper reported on his guilty plea in a criminal harassment case. He subsequently filed a libel lawsuit against the paper, but it was tossed out of court because, the judge ruled, the paper had not printed anything false about him.
His anger over the case festered, police say, until he went on the devastating shooting spree. It was the latest in a long line of mass shootings that have targeted everything from schools to night clubs to concerts and, now, a newspaper.
To their credit, the Capital Gazette staff remained determined to do their jobs, even under the most unimaginably difficult circumstances: “We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow,” one of the reporters said via Twitter.
So they did.
We can only imagine how difficult that day, and the ones that follow, have been and will be for the paper’s staff. And today, from one newspaper to another, we just wanted to say to the Capital Gazette staff that they are in our thoughts, and we admire their resolve in doing their jobs while enduring the unthinkable.
