Virginia TV reporter, photographer killed in shooting during live interview

[Teh One Who Knocks]

FOX 31 Web Staff



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8okt4BuU4

MONETA, Va. — A reporter and photographer were killed Wednesday morning when gunfire erupted during a live interview on Virginia television station WEBJ7.

The incident happened at Bridgewater Plaza in the Roanoke area.

http://i.imgur.com/k5C3naK.jpg

Reporter Allison Parker and photographer Adam Ward were killed in the incident, WDBJ7 meteorologist said on Twitter.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

FOX News


DEVELOPING: A man with a gun has shot and killed two media members on live television while they were filming in central Virginia, according to WDBJ, and police are still searching for the assailant.

The two killed were identified by the station as reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27.

The incident occurred at 6:45 a.m. at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia, according to Franklin County Sheriff Department spokesperson Phillip Young. Earlier, police had reported there were three victims, according to WSLS.

WSLS said police are still looking for the shooter and hope to have a description out to the public shortly.

The shooting occurred live on television while Parker was conducting an interview outdoors, with Ward filming. As the camera panned to Parker and her subject, multiple shots rang out and several screams could be heard. As the camera fell to the ground, an blurry image suspected to be of the gunman came into view on the screen.

WDBJ tweeted about the incident earlier Wednesday morning:


We are trying to figure out what just happened -- thank you all for your concern and kind words.

— WDBJ7 (@WDBJ7) August 26, 2015

Bedford County schools are on lockdown as cops search for the shooter, according to ABC13. The Virginia Department of Transportation has reported a high-priority situation and notes the closing of both north and south lanes of Route 122 in the area.

Moneta is about 25 miles East of Roanoke.

[DemonGeminiX]

:shock:

[DemonGeminiX]

Live reports just said that the shooter may be a disgruntled employee of the TV station.

[DemonGeminiX]

41 year old Vester Lee Flanagan, known professionally as Bryce Williams, has been named as the suspected shooter and is reported to have killed himself.

[DemonGeminiX]

... and now Hillary is crying out for gun control.

[Pony]

... and now Hillary is crying out for gun control.

Fuck her.

The people aren't even cold yet, get outta here with your political BS.

And I saw somewhere that the guy recorded himself shooting them and had posted the video and a "manifesto".

[DemonGeminiX]

Now they're saying the dude shot himself but isn't dead. He's in critical condition. The woman being interviewed during the shooting was shot and is now reported to be in stable condition.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

I tried to post the LiveLeak, but its all ready gone

[DemonGeminiX]

Fuck her.

The people aren't even cold yet, get outta here with your political BS.

And I saw somewhere that the guy recorded himself shooting them and had posted the video and a "manifesto".

I've seen the video but not the "manifesto". It's pretty fucked up. I've seen some of the tweets he posted before twitter took his account down. I'm not posting anything of this crap and I don't think anybody should.

[DemonGeminiX]

If I see the video posted on this forum, I will delete it.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

If I see the video posted on this forum, I will delete it.

Not sure if you just dont want the video embedded on here, but here is a link. Delete it if you want

[Hal-9000]

watched them...that's some close up creepy shit

[DemonGeminiX]

Not sure if you just dont want the video embedded on here, but here is a link. Delete it if you want

I don't want anything to do with the video here. It's easy enough to find by using standard search methods. There's no reason for the video to be embedded or a link to the video to be posted here. It's just unnecessary.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

:tup:

[Goofy]

I don't want anything to do with the video here. It's easy enough to find by using standard search methods. There's no reason for the video to be embedded or a link to the video to be posted here. It's just unnecessary.

:hitler:


Pretty sick though, heard it on the radio news earlier today. No offence intended, but i'm really glad i stay in no-gun Scotland.

[DemonGeminiX]

You'll wish you had guns when you get invaded by the Chinese and Russians and all they want to do is lift up your kilt.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

:lol:

[Loser]

:hitler:


Pretty sick though, heard it on the radio news earlier today. No offence intended, but i'm really glad i stay in no-gun Scotland.


You'll wish you had guns when you get invaded by the Chinese and Russians and all they want to do is lift up your kilt.


Just some info here. Keep in mind, the 12.7 is the number of people in the U.S that filed for hunting licenses... There are vastly more gun owners.

http://i.imgur.com/CELYm0R.jpg

[Teh One Who Knocks]

FOX News and The Associated Press


http://i.imgur.com/ozT7DrH.jpg

The disgruntled former television reporter who murdered two of his former colleagues during a live interview Wednesday morning had a long history of erratic behavior at various workplaces, including acting aggressively toward colleagues and claiming racism was behind uncomplimentary evaluations.

Vester Lee Flanagan, 41, killed himself while fleeing from police in northern Virginia, hours after he fatally shot WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27. A third victim of Flanagan, Vicki Gardner, was in stable condition early Thursday after undergoing surgery.

Flanagan, who reported under the name Bryce Williams, was hired by WDBJ, based in Roanoke, Va. in March 2012. He only lasted 11 months at the station, but The Roanoke Times reported that his outbursts alienated and terrified co-workers.

"He quickly gathered a reputation as someone who was difficult to work with," station president and general manager Jeff Marks told reporters Wednesday. Justin McLeod, a former WDBJ reporter, said that Flanagan "had anger-management issues that went beyond anger management."

"Photographers flat-out refused to work with him," McLeod added. "He called them all racists. He threw that word around a lot. Nobody believed it."

According to documents filed in connection with a racial discrimination suit by Flanagan in 2014 and seen by The Daily Beast, WDBJ colleagues said he made them feel "threatened or uncomfortable." In one incident, Flanagan rounded on a station cameraman who was shooting b-roll footage using a shoulder-mounted camera.

"I’m not trying to be an [expletive], but the shaky video isn’t going to work," Flanagan allegedly told the cameraman before turning to an interview subject and saying, "I’m sorry sir, the footage he just shot is completely unusable."

In November 2012, Flanagan was reprimanded by station bosses for wearing an Obama sticker, a violation of a non-partisan conditions of his contract. But matters came to a head in February 2013, when Flanagan was told he was being dismissed.

According to court papers, an agitated Flanagan responded to the news by angrily saying, "I’m not leaving. You’re going to have to call the [expletive] police. Call the police, I’m not leaving. I’m going to make a stink and it’s going to be in the headlines."

Dan Dennison, the news director who hired and fired Flanagan, recalled in the documents that Flanagan's ranting alarmed station employees, some of whom took shelter in a locked office. Dennison also said Flanagan handed him a small wooden cross and said, "You'll need this."

Police eventually escorted Flanagan out of the building, but he still lived in the area, which McLeod said caused disquiet among some of his former co-workers.

"A couple of months ago, somebody told me, 'Bryce is still in town,'" McLeod told the Roanoke Times. "Several former colleagues were bothered by the fact that he still lived in town."

WDBJ was the last stop for Flanagan in a career that took him to places like Greenville, N.C., Midland, Texas, and Savannah, Ga. Tarcia Bush, a news producer who worked with Flanagan at WTOC in Savannah, recalled him as "a good guy" in an interview with WXIA in Atlanta.

"I just don’t know what happened to him in the years that followed. It was very disturbing to see him and that guy who did that this morning was not the guy I knew. I don’t know this man," Bush said. WTOC confirmed that Flanagan worked there between 1997 and 1999. Bush told WXIA that she didn't remember why Flanagan left the station, but said "I remember one thing about Vester, he was very ambitious ... He wanted to go to the network level someday."

Flanagan is less fondly remembered by former colleagues from WTWC, the NBC affiliate in Tallahassee, where his contract was terminated in 2000 for "bizarre behavior and fighting with other employees," as his former boss put it.

Don Shafer, who currently works as news director for XETV in San Diego, described Flanagan as "a good on-air performer, a pretty good reporter. And then things started getting a little strange."

Shafer said that Flanagan "threatened to punch people out, and he was kind of running fairly roughshod over other people in the newsroom." Former WTWC colleagues told The Daily Beast that Flanagan behaved so poorly toward two female co-workers that the husband of one of the women "came this close to coming into the station and pounding the hell out of him."

Kimberly Moore Wilmoth, who worked with Flanagan at the Florida station, recalled him to the Associated Press as "off-kilter" and someone who "never really made himself part of the team."

Recalling one of a number of incidents, Wilmoth said co-workers meant to tease Flanagan for a story he did on a spelling bee that made it sound as if the winner would get a case of Girl Scouts, rather than cookies sold by the group.

"The next day, somebody had a Girl Scout emblem on their desk and we made some copies of it and taped them to his computer," she said. "If he had only laughed, we would have all been friends forever. But he didn't laugh ... he got mad. And that was when I realized he wasn't part of the collegiality that exists in a newsroom and he removed himself from it."

After he was fired, Flanagan sued WTWC for employment discrimination, claiming that he and another black employee had been called "monkeys" and that a station manager had told him "blacks are lazy and do not take advantage of free money." The case was eventually settled out of court.

Greg Sextro, a former WTWC producer, denied Flanagan's claims that he was discriminated against, telling The Daily Beast that the station had been accommodating to Flanagan and colleagues had offered to help him with his news writing.

"The fact that he kept his job was because he was an African-American gay man," Sextro told the site. "That’s pretty hard to say no to."

Flanagan's Tallahassee claims were echoed in his suit against WDBJ 14 years later, in which the future gunman claimed that a watermelon that frequently appeared around the station was evidence of racial harassment. He also requested that the jury to hear his case be comprised of African-American women. The case was eventually dismissed.

After Flanagan was fired from WDBJ, he worked as a call center representative for UnitedHealthcare in Roanoke from late 2013 to November 2014, the company said.

However, there were signs that he had planned the killings well in advance. In the days before the shootings, Flanagan assembled photos of himself on Twitter and Facebook, as if preparing to introduce himself to a wider audience. ABC News said a man claiming to be Bryce Williams called repeatedly in prior weeks, saying he wanted to pitch a story and needed fax information. He sent ABC's newsroom a 23-page fax two hours after the 6:45 a.m. shooting calling himself a gay black man who had been mistreated by people of all races.

After the shooting, Flanagan tweeted that Parker had "made racist comments" and Ward had complained to human resources about him. Then, he posted video of the shooting online, showing him repeatedly firing at a screaming Parker as she tried to flee.

In addition, Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton told the Roanoke Times that Flanagan had made arrangements to rent the silver Chevrolet Sonic in which he killed himself more than 10 days ago.

Late Wednesday, Flanagan's family issued a statement expressing their "heavy hearts" and "deep sadness" and the shooting.

"Words cannot express the hurt that we feel for the victims."

[perrhaps]

So, a Black man killed two evil White people in a racially-motivated assassination. I wonder how many CVS Pharmacies in White neighborhoods will be burned in retribution?


(crickets)

[Pony]

So, a Black man killed two evil White people in a racially-motivated assassination. I wonder how many CVS Pharmacies in White neighborhoods will be burned in retribution?


(crickets)

I'm too busy at WORK to "protest".

[Teh One Who Knocks]

So, a Black man killed two evil White people in a racially-motivated assassination. I wonder how many CVS Pharmacies in White neighborhoods will be burned in retribution?


(crickets)

How many times do I have to say it? Black people can't commit hate crimes or be racist :facepalm:

[Goofy]

You'll wish you had guns when you get invaded by the Chinese and Russians and all they want to do is lift up your kilt.

If we ever get invaded then i guess its WW3 and the entire planet will be fucked anyway........... plus we'd beat those cunts bare handed anyway :hand: I'm more worried about a zombie apocalypse, i'd have to fight them with a Highlander replica sword and a cricket bat :lol:

[Griffin]

I'm more worried about a zombie apocalypse, i'd have to fight them with a Highlander replica sword and a cricket bat :lol:

You could always head down to the Winchester.

[perrhaps]

I'm too busy at WORK to "protest".

Not me!

[PorkChopSandwiches]

But you need to wait for the mailman

[perrhaps]

He came around 11 today.

[Goofy]

You could always head down to the Winchester.

Have a pint and wait for it all to blow over? :-k Yeah, that does sound better right enough :thumbsup:

[Griffin]

Tell Shaun I said hey, and watch out for Ed's bite.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

:tup:

[Loser]

http://i.imgur.com/DHl9W0Y.jpg