Newspaper reporters routinely show up at crime scenes as police descend to restore order and launch investigations. The journalists take notes, talk to officers and witnesses, and try to make sense of the tragedy.
On Thursday afternoon, one shooting hit closer to home. It happened at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., where the employees work under the corporate umbrella of Tronc, the media company that owns the Chicago Tribune and many other properties. These are our colleagues.
People in virtually every American store, factory, warehouse or office dread what happened Thursday.
Here we'll turn it over to Phil Davis, a Capital Gazette crime reporter who was in the building at the time of the shooting. Like some of his colleagues, he hid under a desk, the Baltimore Sun reports.
"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," Davis wrote on Twitter after the shooting. "There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you're under your desk and then hear the gunman reload."
At this writing we can't offer the basic answers every crime-scene reporter seeks to deliver--the who, what, why, where and when of a tragedy. We hope to do so soon. In the meantime, we mourn these deaths in the family.
Editorial on 07/01/2018