Another staff member at the Capital Gazette, Selene San Felice, told CNN that her first reaction to the shooting was to lie down under her desk, adding that she attempted to exit through a rear door but it was locked.<doc-sep>Carl Hiaasen — a longtime columnist for The Miami Herald — said that he had no information about what had transpired, but that his family was “devastated beyond words.” “He was dedicated to journalism. He spent his whole life as a journalist,” he said. President Trump said on Twitter that he had been briefed on Thursday’s shooting. “My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” he said. His spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, tweeted later: “Strongly condemn the evil act of senseless violence in Annapolis, MD. A violent attack on innocent journalists doing their job is an attack on every American.” Past and present employees of the newspaper chain were struggling to understand what could have prompted such an attack. “The Capital, like all newspapers, angered people every day in its pursuit of the news,” Mr. Marquardt wrote on Facebook. “In my day, people protested by writing letters to the editor; today it’s through the barrel of a gun. Sure, I had death threats and the paper had bomb threats. But we shrugged them off as part of the business we were in.” The New York Police Department said its decision to deploy officers to news organizations was not based on any specific threat, “but rather out of an abundance of caution until we learn more about the suspect and motives behind the Maryland shooting.” The department described such deployments as “a standard practice to shift resources strategically during active shooter or terrorist events.”<doc-sep>Officials on Friday charged a man who they say opened fire with a shotgun inside an Annapolis, Maryland, newsroom, killing five people in what police called a "targeted attack." The suspect, Jarrod Ramos, had sued the Capital Gazette newspaper six years ago and lost. The 38-year-old was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, according to Maryland court documents. His bail hearing will be held at 10:30 a.m. ET at Annapolis District Courthouse. Jarrod Ramos Anthony Messenger, a Capital Gazette intern, said in an interview on "Today" that he first heard pops he thought were fireworks, but soon realized someone was firing inside the newsroom. He and another co-worker tried to exit through a backdoor but found it jammed. "I quickly realized this was a malicious situation," Messenger said. He and his colleague slipped under a desk in the back of the newsroom. They called 911, but were not able to speak because they didn't want to alert the gunman to their location. The colleague ended up using Messenger's phone to tweet that there was an active shooter and "please help us." Messenger said he never got a look at the gunman before he left the building. "Unfortunately we had to pass two bodies of our colleagues, which was something that nobody should ever have to stomach," Messenger said. "It's just unfortunate that somebody would come into a place that only reports truthful stories that are fact-based and unleash hell on the office." The five killed were identified as Wendi Winters, Rebecca Smith, Robert Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman and John McNamara. "This person was prepared to shoot people. His intent was to cause harm," Bill Krampf, deputy police chief of Anne Arundel County, said at a news conference Thursday night. Two people suffered superficial wounds, possibly from broken glass, he added. Ramos, who is from Maryland, sued the Capital Gazette for defamation in 2012 after a columnist wrote about his guilty plea to criminal harassment in 2011. His case was dismissed, and an appeals court affirmed the decision. Police were notified about an active shooter at the newspaper around 2:40 p.m. and arrived to the scene within 30 seconds, authorities said. The gunman also had smoke grenades that he used when he entered the building, Krampf said. Earlier, he had identified the grenades as a "possible explosive device." Anne Arundel County Police Lt. Ryan Frashure said there was no exchange of gunfire between the gunman and police. The Baltimore Sun said police had also been sent to its headquarters as a precaution. The Capital Gazette is one of the oldest publishers in the country, starting in 1727 with the Maryland Gazette. Aerial video showed people leaving the building with their hands up and a heavy police presence. The victims were shot on the first floor of the building, Krampf said. "He entered the building with a shotgun and he looked for his victims" inside, he said, adding that he did not know whether they were specifically targeted.<doc-sep>
Binghui Huang, a former staff writer at the Capital Gazette, recalled on Friday how her former colleagues touched her life when she worked there. "I didn't sleep much last night, she told CNN. "I don't think my friends did either and we have been sharing memories of each one of them and sometimes they're memories make us laugh, I guess those are the good moments that we have." Huang remembered how nervous she was about telling victim Rob Hiaasen, an editor for the paper, that she was moving on from the newspaper. "The paper meant a lot to me, it gave me a chance," she said. "When I told him, I started to cry a little bit. I felt so bad about leaving," she said. "And he looked at me and he said you know what, I don't think I want to see you here in another year or two because he knew that I was ready to leave, and he wanted me to achieve in my career whatever I can." She recalled Gerald Fischman's sharp eye for editing their "sometimes convoluted" stories. "Gerald is kind of quiet, but he's so smart, he has such a sharp eye and at night his job was to clean up everyone's copy," she said. "We were a small paper, a lot of us were young. Stories were sometimes convoluted. He would try to make sense of it and crack jokes about how it made no sense. And coming from Gerald, this quiet, sweet dude was hilarious."