Gunshot Investigated at Black Newspaper in Virginia

 Richmond Police Detective Dale Shamburg investigates gunshot damage to a window on the second floor at the Richmond Free Press building on March 4 as Free Press Editor/Publisher Raymond H. Boone pays close attention. The inset: Close-up of the bullet hole and shattered glass. PHOTO: Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Richmond, Va. Police Department are investigating a gunshot to the window of the headquarters of the Richmond Free Press, a 21-year-old award-winning Black newspaper in the former capital of the Confederacy.

First discovered by Free Press staff members March 3, the nighttime vandalism also included ripped window blinds and scattered debris in the Free Press newsroom, the paper reported this week.

“Thankfully none of our staffers were on duty when our window was bullet-holed and desks were dotted with glass,” said Free Press Editor/Publisher Raymond H. Boone in an editorial published in the March 14-16 edition of the paper, known for its award-winning confrontations with political and economic power brokers on behalf of the poor and racially oppressed.

The editorial said Police Detective Dale Shamburg “suggested the shot came from a shotgun blast fired from a nearby parking lot across from the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the blast may have come from partygoers.”

Boone wrote that the criminal behavior mirrors “an uncivilized act that fits in the same category as past and ongoing schemes to shut down the Free Press.”

The newsroom blast is the latest in a string of destructive incidents targeting the Free Press since the newspaper opened in Downtown Richmond in 1992. They have been so plentiful and destructive that the authorities at the paper reported them to the FBI as well as the police.

Those incidents have included distribution boxes flattened by big-tire vehicles; Free Press editions burned in distribution boxes; racist messages scrawled on the front of the distribution boxes; boxes stolen and papers thrown into trash containers; and the fencing of boxes to block reader access to copies of the newspaper.

But, in the defiant tones reminiscent of Black newspaper editorials throughout history, Boone appears unfazed.

“Despite the consistent vandalism, the Free Press will remain unyielding in its commitment to stand strong for what’s right and to give an equally strong voice to the voiceless,” the editorial states. “The Free Press will not be intimidated. Neither will we bow to political and economic schemes viciously intended to control the Free Press.”