Remembering Alleged Shooter's Victims

Dec. 28 -- A new mother just back from maternity leave, a young man who had encouraged his brother to come on board at a company he loved, and a woman’s gesture of filling in for a co-worker on the day after Christmas put her in the line of fire.

All three were among the seven people gunned down, allegedly by a co-worker who brought a bag of weapons to their Internet consulting company on Tuesday.

Michael McDermott is charged with seven counts of murder in the shooting spree at Edgewater Technology. Prosecutors say he was upset because the company had agreed to garnish his wages to pay back taxes he owed the IRS.

Middlesex County Assistant District Attorney Tom O’Reilly said the victims most likely were not random because “he walked by individuals who were working and specifically targeted the individuals” he shot. Most of the victims worked in the accounting department.

“They were some of the sweetest, smartest people I’ve ever had the chance to work with,” Edgewater employee Michael Stanley told The Boston Globe. “They were the cream of the crop.”

The dead were identified as Janice Hagerty, 46, office manager fromStoneham; Cheryl Troy, 50, vice president for human resources; Jennifer Bragg Capobianco, 29, from marketing; Rose Manfredi, 48, a payroll worker from Lexington; Louis A. Javelle, 58, of Nashua, N.H., director ofconsulting in the company’s Manchester, N.H., office; Paul Marceau,36, a software development technician from Melrose; and Craig Wood, 29, who worked in human resources, of Haverhill.

The church that opened its doors to the survivors this evening was holding a nondenominational service to help the healing begin. But for family, friends and co-workers still in shock, healing likely will be a long process.

Hagerty, the office manager, agreed to fill in because the receptionist was on vacation — a good deed that cost her life. She may have been the second person killed.