Family members of the victims of the 2018 Capital Gazette shooting have settled their lawsuit against the owners of the newspaper and the Annapolis, Maryland, building where a gunman killed five people.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed for family members of Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters.
“It’s an end to our case but it’s a beginning to our fight to make everyone in our country safer … my hope is that it becomes safer for all Marylanders — people in D.C., Virginia and everywhere in the United States to be safer at work,” said Andrea Chamblee, wife of John McNamara.
The lawsuit charged that the newspaper owners and the managers of the building did not provide adequate security for Capital Gazette employees, given the repeated threats by the gunman who had a grudge against the newspaper.
“Everyone has a responsibility to protect employees, and journalists in particular have been under fire, literally, in the past few years,” Chamblee said.
Jarrod Ramos was sentenced in 2021 to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
