Governor Walker has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of the five victims who were killed in the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting in Annapolis, Maryland. The order calls for the U.S. and State of Wisconsin flags to be lowered Tuesday, ending at sunset.
A man armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades attacked the newspaper building last Thursday. He killed four journalists and a staffer before police stormed the building and arrested him.
The dead included Rob Hiaasen, 59, assistant managing editor and brother of novelist Carl Hiaasen. Carl Hiaasen said he was "devastated and heartsick" at losing his brother, "one of the most gentle and funny people I've ever known." Also slain were Gerald Fischman, editorial page editor; features reporter Wendi Winters; reporter John McNamara, and sales assistant Rebecca Smith. Police said two others had minor injuries, and the newspaper later reported both were employees later released from a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
In 2012, the alleged shooter filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper, alleging he was harmed by an article about his conviction in a criminal harassment case a year earlier. The suit was dismissed by a judge who wrote Ramos hadn't shown "anything that was published about you is, in fact, false." An appeals court later upheld the dismissal.
Acting Annapolis Police Chief William Krampf of Anne Arundel County called it a targeted attack in which the gunman "looked for his victims."
"This person was prepared today to come in, this person was prepared to shoot people," Krampf said.
