Annapolis mourns Capital Gazette shooting victims: 'they were part of us'

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June 30, 2018 7:48 PM

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The crowd sang the last notes of “Amazing Grace,” and Pat Furgurson stepped to the microphone, a reporter’s notebook tucked into his back pocket.

“For a moment yesterday, the sword was mightier,” said Furgurson, a reporter for The Capital, where five people were killed in a shooting Thursday afternoon.

“But this morning, we put out a newspaper. And we’ll put out a newspaper tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.”

Furgurson was standing in front of at least 150 people at a vigil in a mall parking lot Friday night. In front of him were five tall candles, one for each victim. Across the street, the building that houses the Capital Gazette office was still cordoned off with police tape.

“We’ll continue to do our bit to provide real news to better inform citizens in this republic,” Furgurson said. “We are not the enemy. We are you.”

In parks and on sports fields, from South Florida to Texas, Americans have gathered again and again this year to grieve in the wake of violent tragedies, and now it was Annapolis’ turn to make sense of a new front in mass shootings: an attack on a local newspaper.

The suspected gunman, who had railed against the paper online and in lawsuits, shot through the office’s glass doors Thursday. Five people were killed: Gerald Fischman, 61, the newsroom’s editorial page editor; Rob Hiaasen, 59, an editor and features columnist; John McNamara, 56, a sports reporter and editor for the local weekly papers; Wendi Winters, 65, a local news reporter and community columnist; and Rebecca Smith, 34, a sales assistant.

Furgurson and the other speakers at the vigil emphasized their paper’s roots and its deep connection to the community it covers.

“They didn’t come from someplace else,” said Michael E. Busch, the Democratic speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, who said his daughter had played soccer with a daughter of Winters. “They were part of us.”

As the vigil wound down, Furgurson moved through the crowd, well aware that he was still on duty. “I’m on the cops and robbers shift,” he said. “So far, an uneventful evening.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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