Maryland newspaper gunman who killed 5 to be sentenced
By BRIAN WITTE
Associated Press
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Survivors of the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting and relatives of the five victims who died in the attack on Tuesday described the pain and loss they have experienced before a Maryland judge, who is scheduled to sentence the gunman.
Montana Winters Geimer, daughter of shooting victim Wendi Winters, testified how her mother “woke up one morning, went to work and never came back.”
“The day she died was the worst day of my life,” Geimer told Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Michael Wachs. “The hours spent not knowing if she was alive or dead have lived in my nightmares ever since.”
Prosecutors are seeking five life terms in prison without the possibility of parole for Jarrod Ramos, who committed the homicides with a shotgun at the newspaper in June 2018 in one of the worst attacks on journalists in U.S. history.
In 2019, Ramos used Maryland’s version of an insanity defense to plead guilty but not criminally responsible to all 23 counts against him.
After a 12-day trial in July, a jury took less than two hours to reject arguments from Ramos’ attorneys that he could not understand the criminality of his actions. The jury found him criminally responsible for killing Winters, John McNamera, Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen and Rebecca Smith.
Prosecutors contend Ramos, 41, acted out of revenge against the newspaper after it published a story about his guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of harassing a former high school classmate in 2011. Prosecutors said his long, meticulous planning for the attack — which included preparations for his arrest and long incarceration — proved he understood the criminality of his actions.
