On a summer afternoon in Annapolis, Maryland, the life of 34-year-old Rebecca Ann Rittenour Smith was tragically cut short. On June 28, 2018, a gunman stormed the offices of the Capital Gazette newspaper in a targeted attack, killing five employees, including Smith. At the time of her death, Smith was a sales assistant at the newspaper.
The perpetrator, Jarrod Ramos of Laurel, Maryland, had a long-standing grudge against the newspaper.
His anger stemmed from a 2011 article that detailed his guilty plea to a criminal harassment charge. Ramos filed a defamation lawsuit against the Capital Gazette, which was ultimately dismissed. In the years that followed, he sent threatening messages to the newspaper. On the day of the shooting, Ramos barricaded the rear exit of the newsroom to prevent escape and opened fire on the employees with a shotgun. After the attack, police found him hiding under a desk.
Law enforcement quickly apprehended Jarrod Ramos at the scene. He was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted first-degree murder, six counts of first-degree assault, and eleven counts of the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
In October 2019, Ramos pleaded guilty to all 23 counts against him but also pleaded not criminally responsible, which is Maryland's equivalent of an insanity defense. This led to a trial to determine his mental state at the time of the killings. In July 2021, a jury found Jarrod Ramos to be criminally responsible for his actions, rejecting his insanity plea. Subsequently, he was sentenced to five life terms in prison without the possibility of parole, one life term for attempted murder, and an additional 345 years.
