"We want to focus on the victims, survivors and first responders," the governor's spokesman, Eric Brown, explained, "not the killer."
To be honest this makes sense to me
That makes sense to me as well. It’s the use of the term “Suspect A” that throws me off.
The quote you give (and given in the article), calls him “the killer”. But that comes from a spokesperson for the governor. Debra Saunders claims in the first paragraph the governor referred to the killer as “Suspect A”, and that term is used in the headline.
My point is, its use made me wonder if the story was about another suspect (i.e. “Suspect B”) emerging from the investigation. That’s what I expected I would be reading.