General
E.B. Furgurson III, Who Covered Massacre at His Newspaper, Dies at 70
After five people were killed in the newsroom, he set up a work space in the back of his pickup truck and made sure the next day’s issue was published.
E.B. Furgurson III, a reporter who, after five of his colleagues at the Maryland newspaper The Capital were massacred in their newsroom by a grudge-fueled gunman, helped produce the next day’s issue from his pickup truck, died on Nov. 25 in Annapolis, Md. He was 70.
His wife, Rebecca (Bisgood) Furgurson, said his death, in a hospital, was caused by an “extended illness.”
On June 28, 2018, Mr. Furgurson — who, like his father, also a journalist, was known as Pat — had gone for lunch at the food court at the Westfield Annapolis Mall, across the street from the newspaper, when he received a text about the shootings, which killed four of his fellow journalists, Rob Hiaasen, Wendi Winters, John McNamara and Gerald Fischman, and Rebecca Smith, a sales assistant.
The gunman, Jarrod W. Ramos, had held a grudge against the paper for publishing an article in 2011 about his guilty plea in a harassment case. In 2021, he was sentenced to six consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, one for each of the five people he killed and one for attempted murder.
Mr. Furgurson quickly left the food court and, in the mall’s garage, turned the back of his pickup truck into a makeshift work space that he shared with a photographer, Josh McKerrow, and a reporter, Chase Cook.
While Mr. Furgurson made telephone calls and talked to the police, he became a calming influence to an anxious Mr. McKerrow.
