The Annapolis Shooter Had a Lot of Problems That Had NOTHING to Do With Politics

The picture surrounding the attack on the Annapolis, Maryland newspaper office is beginning to come together.

Jarrod Ramos walked into the Capital Gazette on Thursday afternoon, armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades. He killed five and injured seven more people.

The attack showed a certain level of planning. He carried no identification and reports are that he’d somehow damaged his fingers to obscure his fingerprints. The authenticity of that part is still sketchy, at this point.

Other things that seem clear and need to be addressed immediately: Despite the direct line Fox News personality, Sean Hannity attempted to draw between the shooter and California Representative Maxine Waters’ nasty rhetoric, that wasn’t the case.

Likewise, there doesn’t appear to be any link between Ramos’ motivations and the equally caustic rhetoric from Donald Trump or anyone on the right.

This was just a really, really twisted guy, who acted independent of anyone or anything else, other than his own, personal demons.

According to the reports that began seeping out to the public Thursday evening, Ramos has a longstanding grudge against the Capital Gazette and its editors.

In 2011, Ramos entered a guilty plea in a case of what is being described as “vicious harassment” of a woman. The Capital Gazette did what newspapers do: They reported on it.

In that case, Ramos “friended” a woman on Facebook that he went to high school with. The woman didn’t remember him, but she added him, anyway.

When he indicated he was having some problems, she sent him messages over Facebook, in an attempt to be helpful, and gave him information on a counseling center.

He began attacking her with foul language and vulgar names. She attempted to block him, but that didn’t help.

“Have another drink and go hang yourself, you cowardly little lush. Don’t contact you again? I don’t give an [expletive],” the Capital Gazette quoted one of his emails as saying. “[Expletive] you.”

Ramos also started contacting the woman’s workplace in a bid to get her fired. His victim said she was placed on probation after he called and emailed the bank where she worked. When she was laid off shortly thereafter, she suspected Ramos to be behind the decision.

As further proof that Ramos was not well, he took the reporting of the incident personally.

Ramos filed a defamation suit against the newspaper, but had his case and his appeal tossed by judges. But he continued to rail against the Capital Gazette for years, including on Twitter—where his profile picture was a crude photoshop of a sacrificial symbol onto the head of the journalist who wrote the Capital Gazette story about him.

Was this behavior noticed by those he was targeting? Were they concerned?

According to Zak Shirley, an attorney who represented the newspaper during Ramos’ ill-advised defamation suit, they were absolutely worried.

“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.”

Ramos’ Twitter profile picture was a photo of a Capital Gazette journalist who wrote a 2011 column about the harassment case. Ramos photoshopped the picture to include the “Brand of Sacrifice,” a symbol from the Japanese manga and anime series Berserk, on the journalist’s head. The series describes ritual murder for people marked with the brand.

His Twitter feed was full of threats against the newspaper, as well as the judges involved in his case.

“I’ll enjoy seeing @capgaznews cease publication,” he tweeted earlier that year, “but it would be nicer to see [two Capital Gazette staffers] cease breathing.”

He also tweeted out threats against Rob Hiaasen, a staffer with the newspaper, who also happened to be the first confirmed casualty of Ramos’ rampage.

As the day goes on, expect more clarification on the details of the shooting, as well as a sea of hot takes, but the reality is, Jarrod Ramos was mentally unwell.

Let’s not muddy the waters by politicizing it, and let’s only point fingers at the one responsible – Ramos, himself.