Victims identified in Capital Gazette shooting

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Anne Arundel County police have identified the five people killed in a shooting at the offices of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis.

At a news conference held Thursday night, police announced that Wendi Winters, Rebecca Smith, Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman and John McNamara did not survive the tragic incident. They were all employees of the Capital Gazette.

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Hiaasen was the deputy editor and columnist for the newspaper. He was a veteran journalist who previously worked as a reporter at the Baltimore Sun. The 59-year-old grew up in Florida and also worked for the Palm Beach Post. Carl Hiassen, a novelist and a longtime columnist for the Miami Herald, told the Associated Press that his brother "spent his whole gifted career as a journalist, and he believed profoundly in the craft and mission of serving the public's right to know the news."

McNamara recently returned to covering news as a reporter and editor for the Bowie Blade-News and the Crofton-West County Gazette. But during most of his nearly 24-year run at the Capital Gazette, he fulfilled his dream as a sports reporter. McNamara graduated from the University of Maryland back in 1983.

Fischman was an editorial page editor who spent more than 25 years at the Capital Gazette. He was a 1979 graduate at the University of Maryland.

Winters served as a special publications editor at the Maryland publication. The 65-year-old was passionate about serving the community and was the "heart of the newspaper," a former editor told the Associated Press.

Smith was a recent hire at the Capital Gazette after previously working in marketing at a health care organization. She worked in the Annapolis newspaper office as a sales assistant, according to the Baltimore Sun, the paper that owns the Capital Gazette. A Baltimore-area native, Smith lived in Baltimore County with her fiance.