A reporter who was present for Thursday’s deadly shooting at a newsroom in Annapolis, Md., said during an emotional interview hours after the shooting that her colleagues need “more than prayers” in the days and weeks following the attack.
Selene San Felice, a reporter at the Capital Gazette, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a telephone interview that the gunman who killed at least five people and wounded others with a shotgun left the small newsroom “shattered.”
“I’m going to need more than a couple days of news coverage and some thoughts and prayers, because it’s our whole lives have been shattered,” she said.
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“So thanks for your prayers, but I couldn’t give a f— about them if there’s nothing else,” she added in a comment that went uncensored on the network.
“I didn’t even expect to be talking to Anderson Cooper today. I thought people would just get an Apple News notification and blow it off.”
Multiple news outlets identified the suspect in the shooting as 38-year-old Jarrod Ramos, a Maryland resident involved in a 2012 defamation suit with the newspaper over its coverage of his conviction for criminal harassment.
Acting Anne Arundel County police chief William Krampf did not publicly identify the suspect during a news conference late Thursday, describing him only as a white male in his late 30’s. Police have also so far not publicly identified a motive for the shooting.
“The investigation has just started. So as [a police spokesman] has said, we’re going to be quite a while determining what occurred, how it occurred, and why it occurred,” Krampf told reporters.
President Trump tweeted that he was briefed on the shooting prior to departing Wisconsin on Thursday, and wrote that his “thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.”