A woman who claimed the man now in custody after a deadly mass shooting at an Annapolis newspaper reportedly warned police about him years ago.
Jarrod W. Ramos, 38, is in police custody after he allegedly opened fire inside the offices of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis on Thursday, killing five people and injuring several others.
As the New York Post reports, a reporter from the Baltimore station WBAL-TV said that a woman who had allegedly been stalked by Ramos warned police years ago of his potential for violence.
The reporter, Jayne Miller, said on Twitter Thursday that the woman claimed to have told a former law enforcement official that Ramos “will be your next mass shooter.”
"He's a f***** nut job" –woman who says she was stalked by suspect in fatal shooting of 5 people at Capital Gazette in Annapolis…says she warned former police official years ago.."he will be your next mass shooter"
— Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) June 29, 2018
Woman who was stalked, harassed, sued, and scared away to another state by suspect in fatal shooting of 5 at Capital Gazette in Annapolis told me he became, for no obvious reason, "fixated" with her..caused her to move 3x, changed her name, and now sleeps with a gun.
— Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) June 29, 2018
The Daily Beast reports that Ramos had sued the Capital Gazette for defamation after the newspaper reported on his 2011 harassment conviction. It is unclear if that victim is the same woman who warned the police official about Ramos. After a court dismissed the harassment suit and the subsequent appeal, Ramos reportedly made social media threats against the newspaper.
Zak Shirley, an attorney who represented the Capital Gazette in the defamation suit, told the Daily Beast that he too saw a potential for violence because of the social media threats.
“We were concerned about him at the time, it definitely came up more than once,” Shirley said. “And it was because of his Twitter feed.”
The Twitter profile no longer appears to exist, but the Daily Beast reports that the account was threatening to a Capital Gazette journalist who wrote about the harassment case, and insinuated a threat of ritual murder against the reporter.
[Feature image: Jarrod Ramos/Anne Arundel Police via AP]
