Vester Lee Flanagan II, who killed WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward
The fatal shooting of a reporter and cameraman unfolded on live TV during an early morning show and within hours the carefully scripted carnage carried out by a disgruntled former colleague spread to millions of viewers over social media.
Soon after the shooting, posts on Twitter and Facebook referencing the slain TV pair surfaced on an account under an on-air pseudonym used by the gunman — culminating with a first-person video of the ambush filmed by the shooter.
The social media post made Wednesday (early yesterday, Macau time) through an account under the name Bryce Williams name had a 56-second video clip. It shows Vester Lee Flanagan II quietly approach Parker and Adam Ward, gun in hand, as they conduct an interview. But Ward’s camera was aimed at the mini-golf course nearby instead of the reporter. So the shooter waited, cursing Parker under his breath, for 20 seconds until the live television picture was back on the reporter. Then he fired eight shots without saying a word.
Yesterday, one day after the deaths shocked millions across the U.S., the grieving staff at WDBJ-TV came together for an emotional broadcast of its “Mornin’” show. At 6:45 a.m. — the time of the shooting that took the lives of reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward — the station observed a moment of silence, showing the victim’s photos on the screens.
The morning broadcast included a series of news pieces on the shooting. One looked at the criminal investigation of gunman Vester Lee Flanagan II, the former WDBJ-TV reporter known to viewers by his on-air name Bryce Williams. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound hours after the shooting.
About three hours after the killing, ABC News reported it received a 23-page faxed statement from Bryce Williams, the on-air name used by Flanagan.
The crime played out in real time on Twitter and Facebook. The station’s live footage of the shooting was being shared over and over before even station managers knew the fate of their employees. Some 40,000 viewers had initially tuned in, including the local sheriff, and heard Parker scream. They saw her run as the camera fell, capturing a fleeting image of a man holding a handgun.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s assurance that an arrest was “imminent” spread quickly, only to be followed soon after with a post on the Twitter account Flanagan apparently used under the pseudonym: “I filmed the shooting see Facebook.” It was there that the video appeared.
The 41-year-old Flanagan had been fired by the station in 2013 and had to be escorted out of the building, President and General Manager Jeffrey Marks said.
On Twitter, Flanagan described workplace conflicts with both of his victims. He said Parker had made racist comments and that she was still hired after he filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ward had reported him to human resources, he said.
Flanagan alleged that other employees made racially tinged comments to him, but his EEOC claim was dismissed and none of his allegations could be corroborated, Marks said.
Flanagan was fired at least twice from small-market stations after managers said he caused problems with other employees.
In the fax to ABC, Flanagan called himself a gay black man who had been mistreated by people of all races. He said he bought the gun two days after nine black people were killed in a June 17 shooting at a Charleston church and wanted to use it to retaliate for what authorities called a racially motivated shooting.
He described himself as a “human powder keg” that was “just waiting to go BOOM!!!!”
The fax also included admiration for the gunmen who carried out mass killings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. Jonathan Drew and Alan Suderman, Moneta, Va., AP
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