Before the horrific shooting in which five people were killed at the Capital Gazette newspaper, Annapolis was known as a quaint and genteel city. More than 350 years old, built in red brick, it is the type of place where sailing and lacrosse are as big as baseball and football, and where antique shops and B&Bs are major economic engines.

The Maryland state legislature still meets in an 18th-century building, just down the hall from where George Washington resigned from the Continental army. Prior to the attack on the Capital Gazette on Thursday, the most notable act of violence to occur in the city may have been a battle in 1655 that is generally known as the last skirmish of the English civil war.

“We’re just such a quiet area,” said Carol Donaldson, a 73-year-old retiree who has lived in Annapolis for 50 years. Besides the traffic, she said, “there’s not much here to get upset about.”

The mass shooting that rocked this community happened just outside the city limits shortly before 3pm on Thursday. It took place in a nondescript suburban office building in which the Capital Gazette shares space with dentists and lawyers, across the street from an upscale shopping mall filled with department stores and the nicer sort of chain restaurants.

In the aftermath, the scene was chaotic. Emergency vehicles surrounded the building: police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, a mobile command center or two. Helicopters whirled overhead while police officers in tactical vests and camouflage gear milled around in the distance.

Bethany Clasing, a legal assistant who worked one floor above the Capital Gazette, only realized she was hearing gunshots when police officers arrived and yelled at people to “get down”. Speaking to reporters shortly after the shooting, she was still dumbfounded.

“It’s not like you would expect someone to come and shoot up this building,” she said.

Hours later, the Capital Gazette had published in tribute profiles of its five murdered staffers. They were the assistant news editor Rob Hiaasen, the editorial page editor Gerald Fischman, the special publications editor Wendi Winters, the sales assistant Rebecca Smith and the staff writer John McNamara.

People move en masse through Annapolis during a candlelight vigil on Friday. Photograph: Baltimore Sun/TNS/Sipa USA/REX/Shutterstock

Sitting in a Starbucks on Friday, Donaldson was still adjusting to the events of the day before. She had left the mall only an hour before the shooting and was transfixed by the news when it happened. She said she didn’t stop following the story until 10pm, then spent nearly two hours lying awake in bed.

Donaldson is the mother of a former Capital Gazette reporter and sister-in-law of a another former employee. She said she thought “people need an outlet right now to show their sorrow”.

“I think once people get over being stunned, being shocked, maybe a month, it will slow down,” she said.

The area around the Capital Gazette building still bore scars. It was still partially surrounded by police tape but cars were driving by and people were coming and going. In the bank directly in front of the building, employees sat at their desks, getting it ready to reopen on Friday afternoon.

A makeshift memorial had been created at the corner in front of the bank, a half-block from the Capital Gazette. Under a long, low brick embankment, flowers and balloons were scattered with a sign bearing the slogan: “Annapolis Strong”.

An handful of people stood around, looking at the display. Amber Thornton, 23 and from Glen Burnie, Maryland, was tearful as she described the shooting, saying: “You’d never expect something like this in this area.” Her infant daughter looked at the balloons that swayed in the summer air.

Across the street, in the Annapolis Mall, an employee pushed a kid on a cart fashioned like a model train, while shoppers strolled by.

Taking a walk along the edge of mall, Bob Mann, an Annapolis native, said violence like that which was visited on the Capital Gazette was “just endemic in our society right now”.

Thursday’s killings came just over four months after a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, left 17 students and staff dead. In May, 10 people died at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas. But Mann said that while “everyone was upset”, some Annapolis residents were already moving on.

“People are going about their lives,” he said. “I went had beers with buddies last night and people aren’t even talking about it.”

Other shoppers didn’t even realize they were so close to the crime scene. Gary and Pam Shupe from Waldorf, Maryland, had driven up to shop and were staring at a row of television cameras, in front of an adjacent strip mall that advertised “psychotherapeutics services”.

“We come up here all the time and park right there,” said Pam Shupe. They had no worries about returning to Annapolis. “Stuff like this happens everywhere for no reason. It happens in DC, it happens in our little Waldorf,” said Pam Shupe.

Her husband added: “You can’t lock yourself up.”