A fired television reporter with a history of conflicts at work and rage apparently stoked by racial grievances sought revenge on Wednesday, gunning down two former colleagues and using the tools of social media to ensure his crime was broadcast live, recorded from multiple angles and posted online.
Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, identified by the authorities as the gunman, waited until Alison Parker and Adam Ward, young journalists at WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia, were on air, then killed them while recording on his own video camera. Flanagan shot himself in the head hours later, the authorities said, but as the chase for him was on, he wrote about the shooting on Twitter, uploaded his video to Facebook and sent a manifesto to ABC News that spoke admiringly of mass killers and said that as a black, gay man, he had faced discrimination and sexual harassment.
The day began with the most mundane of early-morning interviews. Parker and Ward were working on a story for WDBJ about the 50th anniversary of Smith Mountain Lake that is a popular with anglers, kayakers and sunbathers. They stood on a balcony of Bridgewater Plaza, a shopping and office complex on the lakeshore, talking with Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Photo: EPA
At about 6:45am, the shooting began.
The station’s own disturbing video shows Parker screaming and stumbling backward as the shots ring out and a set of jumbled images as the camera falls to the floor. Eight shots can be heard before the broadcast cut back to the stunned anchor at the station, Kimberly McBroom.
Shortly afterward, Flanagan wrote on Twitter: “I filmed the shooting see Facebook,” and a shocking 56-second video recording, which appeared to be taken by a body camera worn by the gunman, was posted to his Facebook page. It showed him waiting until the journalists were on air before raising a handgun and firing at point-blank range, ensuring that it would be seen, live or recorded, by thousands.
Both social media accounts used the name he was known by on television, Bryce Williams, and both were shut down within hours of the shooting.
Parker, 24, a reporter, and Ward, 27, a cameraman, both white, were pronounced dead at the scene. Gardner was wounded and underwent emergency surgery, but was expected to survive. Flanagan shot and killed himself hours later after being cornered by the police on a highway about 300km away.
Almost two hours after the shootings, a 23-page missive faxed to ABC news headquarters in New York, apparently from Flanagan, pointed to the June 17 shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white supremacist is accused of killing nine black people in a Bible study group. ABC reported that a man claiming to be Bryce Williams had contacted the network several times in recent weeks, saying he had a story for them. He never said what it was.
“Why did I do it?” Flanagan said in the rambling message. “I was already on the edge. The church shooting was a tipping point. The victims initials are written on the bullets.”
He echoed the words of accused Charleston gunman Dylann Roof and spoke of a race war. He also said Jehovah had told him to act. He spoke admiringly of the Columbine High School killers and the gunman who carried out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 32 people dead. At one point he called his document a “Suicide Note for Friends and Family.”
The fax, which also contained accusations that he was repeatedly harassed, bullied and discriminated against for being black and gay, was turned over to law enforcement officials. On Twitter, he made similar charges of racism and harassment, adding that he had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency. A spokeswoman for the agency, Kimberly Smith-Brown, said federal law prohibited her from confirming whether the agency had received a complaint.
“This gentleman was disturbed at the way things had turned out at some point in his life,” Overton said at the news conference. “Things were spiraling out of control.”
Accounts from former colleagues, competitors and court records indicate Flanagan, who had graduated from San Francisco State University and worked in several markets around the South, was a skilled broadcaster, but also volatile, combative, threatening and prone to seeing himself as persecuted.
Flanagan seemed to have particular animus toward Parker and Ward.
“Alison made racist comments,” he wrote on Twitter just after the shooting, an apparent reference to Parker.
Two minutes later, apparently referring to Ward, he wrote: “Adam went to hr on me after working with me one time!!!”
Court filings in a civil lawsuit Flanagan brought against the station documented his many confrontations. In a May 31, 2012, memo, WDBJ executive Dan Dennison wrote that Flanagan had, on three occasions, “behaved in a manner that has resulted in one or more of your co-workers feeling threatened or uncomfortable.”
In another memo two months later, Dennison ordered Flanagan to go for help to the company’s employee assistance program, and stated he engaged “in behaviors that constitute creation of a hostile work environment.”
After the shootings Wednesday, Flanagan left the scene in a rented car; his own car was parked at the Roanoke airport, Overton said.
Officials said police pursued him north on Interstate 81 for a time, but did not attempt to catch him, knowing that he was armed; it is not clear whether they lost track of him. After he turned east on Interstate 66, heading in the direction of the Washington suburbs, a state trooper spotted the car using a license plate reader, and after being joined by other units, the troopers turned on their lights and tried to pull him over at about 11:30am.
“He refused to stop and sped away,” Sergeant Rick Garletts of the State Police said.
A minute or two later, “the vehicle ran off the road and into the median,” Garletts said.
Flanagan was found with a gunshot wound to the head and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead two hours later.
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