ANNAPOLIS, Md. – A woman whose harassment by Jarrod W. Ramos led to his vendetta against the Capital Gazette says she immediately panicked when she learned of the attack on the paper that killed five people.
Speaking with NBC’s “Today” show in an interview aired Monday, she said his relentless abuse forced her to move out of Maryland, where Ramos is now charged with murder in Thursday’s shootings.
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“I would be afraid that he could show up anywhere at any time and kill me,” she said. “I have been tormented and traumatized and terrorized for so long, that it has I think changed the fiber of my being.”
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NBC agreed to obscure her features and use only her first name, Lori.
She described their first contact, years ago: “He reached out to me via email, to ask if I remembered him from high school; I replied to him, nicely, that I did not,” she said.
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Several more exchanges followed, until, months later, she said she didn’t write back quickly enough for him. His response: “He said f you, go kill yourself. You’re going to need a protective order,” she recalled.
Ramos eventually pleaded guilty to harassing the woman, which the newspaper reported, and from that point on Ramos launched a vendetta against the Gazette, threatening its staff online and in the courts.
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“He is very cold, he is very calculated, he is very intelligent,” Lori said. But “one thing that I do feel now is that he can no longer silence me.”