The perpetrator of a murderous shooting in a local American newspaper was sentenced to life imprisonment on Tuesday three years after the attack that caused a stir in the United States.
Jarrod Ramos, 41, pleaded guilty to the assault on the Capital Gazette newsroom on June 28, 2018 in Annapolis, where he shot five people with a shotgun before being arrested.
He had, however, pleaded insanity to be sent to hospital rather than jail.
A jury had been called to decide and had decided in July that he was criminally responsible.
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On Tuesday, his sentence was set at a hearing during which his victims were able to speak. He did not, according to the journalists present, express any emotion in front of these testimonies or during the pronouncement of the sentence, which is incompressible, which guarantees that he will spend the end of his life behind bars. Jarrod Ramos, a lonely and disturbed man, had a conflicted relationship with the Capital Gazette after he unsuccessfully attacked him for defamation and threatened him several times on the internet. He blamed him for an article from 2011 entitled "
Jarrod wants to be your friend
", in which the newspaper recounted the ordeal of a young woman whom he had harassed on the internet, which had earned him a 90-day suspended prison sentence. .
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He had spent two years preparing for his attack, had scouted and even taken out a chess club membership in anticipation of his detention.
The drama, one of the worst attacks on a media outlet in the United States, had sent shock waves through the country.
Then president, Donald Trump had denounced a “
horrible
”
assault
which had “
shocked the conscience of our country
”.
"
The impact of this case is immense,
" noted Judge Michael Wachs during the hearing.
"
To my dismay, he said that planning this attack was the best time of his life,
" he added, according to statements reported by local television WBAL.
