ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Court records show the man charged with killing five people at a Maryland newspaper was fired by a government computer contractor because of concerns about his ‘‘suitability.’’
Jarrod Ramos, 38, was charged with five counts of murder after he allegedly opened fire Thursday at the Capital Gazette offices in Annapolis.
District of Columbia Superior Court records show Ramos sued Virginia-based Enterprise Information Systems in 2014 over wages.
In a letter to the company’s president filed in court records, Ramos said the Bureau of Labor Statistics had requested that he be removed from his job. Ramos wrote was told only that there was a concern about his suitability. A panel of judges wrote that the prime contractor demanded that Ramos be fired for unspecified reasons.
Ramos won $1,200 in the suit for a bonus he said EIS had denied him. EIS did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
A Department of Labor spokesman said Ramos worked on information technology contracts for the labor statistics bureau from 2007 to 2014.
Memorial services for two of the five Capital Gazette journalists are scheduled for this week.
Rob Hiaasen, 59, will be honored Monday at Irvine Nature Center in Owings Mills. The invitation says shorts are welcome; the paper’s assistant managing editor wouldn’t have wanted attendees to have to wear a suit for him.
A memorial service for special publications editor Wendi Winters will be Saturday at Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis.
The others killed in the shooting were Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, and Rebecca Smith.
On Friday, 1,000-plus people streamed through Annapolis to honor the five journalists.
The Capital Gazette said Sunday that it had received death threats and e-mails celebrating the shootings.
The newspaper said in an editorial that it would not forget being called ‘‘an enemy of the people.’’ President Trump has used identical language to describe the news media.
“Exposing evil, shining light on wrongs and fighting injustice is what we do,’’ the paper said.
The Gazette said people also called on the paper to fire a reporter who cursed on television after seeing her friends shot.
The paper also thanked the community for its support.
A former publisher at the Gazette said she treated threats from Ramos ‘‘incredibly seriously’’ after he first made them. Patricia Richardson was publisher when Ramos sent menacing tweets five years ago and sued the paper in 2012 after it wrote about his pleading guilty to harassing a woman.
Richardson, now publisher of The Day in New London, Conn. said she got law enforcement involved. According to Anne Arundel County police records, a detective concluded Ramos wasn’t a threat to employees and the paper did not want to press charges for fear of ‘‘putting a stick in a beehive.’’
