Maryland is set to award $300,000 for the construction of a memorial honoring the victims of a deadly shooting at a newspaper office. The state plans to award the funds next week for a memorial that will be located in an Annapolis park and pay tribute to slain Capital Gazette employees John McNamara, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, Rob Hiaasen and Rebecca Smith, the newspaper reported.
The memorial, called “Guardians of Free Speech,” will include five pillars in front of the text of the First Amendment carved in stone, the newspaper said. The project is set to be unveiled in June 2021 on the three-year anniversary of the shooting in which authorities said a man with a history of harassing people at the paper burst into the Annapolis newsroom and opened fire. Jarrod Ramos pleaded guilty in the killings.
