The Baltimore Orioles held a moment of silence for five employees of The Capital Gazette newspaper on Friday after they were killed in a shooting at their newsroom on Thursday afternoon.
The team recognized the five victims during Friday’s home game by displaying their names and faces on the big screen at Baltimore’s Camden Yards stadium.
{mosads}Eduardo Encina, a sports reporter for The Baltimore Sun — the Capital Gazette’s parent newspaper — also tweeted a photo of white lilies and a copy of Friday’s Capital Gazette newspaper resting in the press box where a Capital Gazette reporter normally would sit.
“A copy of today’s @capgaznews and white lilies placed at the Capital Gazette’s press box seat at Camden Yards. #Orioles will hold a moment of silence before tonight’s game for the victims of the #CapitalGazetteShooting. #Annapolis #Baltimore,” Encina wrote.
Police identified the five victims of Thursday’s shooting as the Capital Gazette’s assistant editor Rob Hiaasen, editorial page editor Gerald Fischman, staff writer John McNamara, special publications editor Wendi Winters and sales assistant Rebecca Smith.
Acting Anne Arundel County police chief William Krampf described the shooting as a targeted attack on the newspaper by a suspect with a known “vendetta” against the paper and its staff.
“This was a targeted attack on the Capital Gazette,” he said. “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.”