Rob Hiaasen, assistant news editor, and other four staff members of the Capital Gazette daily, based in Annapolis, were killed on June 28 when an attacker armed with a shotgun and smoke grenades forced his way into the paper’s office and sprayed the newsroom with bullets.
Media reports said the suspect, who has been arrested, had brought a defamation suit against several of the paper’s journalists in 2012 after the Capital Gazette reported on a criminal case in which the suspect plead guilty to harassing a woman on social media. A judge later dismissed the lawsuit, a ruling upheld by a higher court in 2015.