A lone gunman burst into the offices of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, on Thursday, shooting and killing five newspaper employees and “gravely injuring” several more, the Baltimore Sun reports.
The Gazette’s crime reporter, Phil Davis, posted a series of tweets describing his experience of the shooting:
A single shooter shot multiple people at my office, some of whom are dead.
— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC) June 28, 2018
Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees. Can't say much more and don't want to declare anyone dead, but it's bad.
— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC) June 28, 2018
There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you're under your desk and then hear the gunman reload
— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC) June 28, 2018
“I’m a police reporter. I write about this stuff—not necessarily to this extent, but shootings and death—all the time,” Davis later told the Baltimore Sun. “But as much as I’m going to try to articulate how traumatizing it is to be hiding under your desk, you don’t know until you’re there and you feel helpless.”
Currently, there’s no evidence regarding who was behind the shooting, or the shooter’s motivations. But shortly after the shooting, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos posted a defensive statement on Facebook in anticipation of accusations that he had incited the shooting. The alt-right has long called for violence against journalists, and Yiannopoulos recently responded to at least two journalists’ requests for comment with “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”
There was also police presence on Thursday afternoon following the shooting at the newsroom of the Baltimore Sun, which owns the Capital Gazette, as a precaution. In New York City, the New York Police Department was dispatched to protect major newsrooms, Fox News reports.