President Donald Trump has ordered that the nation’s flags fly at half-staff in honor of the five people who were shot and killed last week in an attack at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Maryland, according to multiple reports.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told NBC News that flags will be lowered Tuesday. Trump decided to lower the flags Monday night, "as soon as the president heard about the request from the mayor," White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told The Washington Post.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan last week ordered that the state’s flags fly at half-staff in honor of the Capital Gazette shooting victims but Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley told reporters that Trump declined a request over the weekend to have the nation’s flags lowered. The president has frequently lambasted members of the media in the past.
"This was an attack on the press," Buckley told the Capital Gazette on Monday afternoon. "It was an attack on freedom of speech. It's just as important as any other tragedy."
Wendi Winters, 65; Gerald Fischman, 61; Rob Hiaasen, 59; John McNamara, 56; and Rebecca Smith, 34, died Thursday after a lone gunman with a longstanding grudge against the paper opened fire at the offices in Annapolis, according to police.
Authorities have charged Jarrod Ramos, 38, with five counts of first-degree murder in the wake of the shooting. A judge ordered him held without bond last week.
Trump has ordered that flags fly at half-mast in the wake of four previous mass shootings, according to USA Today. Flags were lowered after 58 people were killed at a music festival in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017; after 26 people were shot and killed at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in November 2017; after 17 students and staff members died on Feb. 14 in an attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; and after eight students and two teachers were fatally shot at Texas' Santa Fe High School on May 18.
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