Luke Rosiak, DCNF
Jarrod Warren Ramos — who allegedly killed five Maryland newspaper employees Thursday — worked at the Department of Labor at the time that he was convicted of harassment in 2011 for a pattern of bizarre behavior and remained in that job until 2014.
A spokesman for the Department of Labor told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Ramos had been employed by a Bureau of Labor Statistics IT contractor and that his employment ended in 2014. He did not say on what terms the employment ended.
In July 2011, Ramos pleaded guilty to criminal harassment in a Maryland courthouse. He was initially sentenced to 90 days in jail, but served 18 months of probation and was ordered to therapy.
The Capitol Gazette, a local paper, published an article on the harassment case, headlined “Jarrod wants to be your friend.” It outlined a bizarre fixation by Ramos on a high school classmate who did not remember him, with years of Facebook messages and persistent threats.
“He would send me things and basically tell me, ‘You’re going to need [a] restraining order now.’ ‘You can’t make me stop. I know all these things about you … Have another drink and hang yourself,’” the victim recounted to Gazette writer Eric Thomas Hartley.
Hartley’s July 2011 column said Ramos’ lawyer said he has a degree in computer engineering and had worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics for six years.
The column said “The case is extreme. But it provides a frightening look at the false intimacy the Internet can offer and the venom that can hide behind a computer screen.”
Before his identity and motives were known, Randi Weingarten, president of a public employees union, blamed the shooting on President Trump, saying “This is a nightmare… the demonization of the press leading to a shooting of the Press.”
Despite the 2011 conviction, Ramos continued to work for the BLS contractor. And his fixation switched to Hartley and the Gazette for writing the column about him, including with talk of violence against the paper on Twitter.
In 2012, Ramos filed a complaint against the paper and Hartley for defamation, one that later drew rebuke from a judge who said “he is not entitled to equal sympathy with his victim and may not blithely dismiss her as a ‘bipolar drunkard.’ He does not appear to have learned his lesson.’”
On Thursday, Ramos allegedly stormed the paper with a shotgun and smoke bombs, killing five. Hartley was not among them.
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