USA TODAY International Edition
KILLER OF TV CREW LEFT A TRAIL ON SOCIAL MEDIA
After slayings, shooter had a lot to say online
A few hours after a gunman walked up to a young TV reporter and her cameraman and shot them dead on live TV, a message appeared on Twitter. Short and unpunctuated, it read, “I filmed the shooting see Facebook”
The tweet came from the gunman.
The grim narrative that unfolded Wednesday was shocking to watch. Part gun- related workplace dispute and part racial hate crime — the gunman was African American, the victims white — the horrifying shootings played out on live local TV, then on social media, then again on TV everywhere, as police pieced together what had happened.
The shootings shattered that most routine of rituals, the early morning stand- up interview with the head of the local chamber of commerce. Even the sheriff was watching the broadcast when the shots rang out. It was hardly a spree shooting, but the gunman’s bravura, reeling out on our news feeds, our Twitter streams and Facebook pages, made it seem more menacing.
In the hours after the killing of Alison Parker, 24, and Adam Ward, 27, the lone suspect in the case, Vester Flanagan, had a lot to say.
As police undertook a massive manhunt, Flanagan took to social media and sent out jittery videos of the shooting from his point of view. He tweeted to complain that the dead reporter was a racist and that the cameraman had filed a complaint about him with the station’s human resources department.
He faxed a 23- page, expletive-
ridden letter to ABC News, saying he’d bought his gun and hollowpoint bullets two days after the mass shootings June 17 at a Charleston, S. C., church.
Nearly five hours after the murders, Flanagan, 41, shot himself in a rental car as police chased him down Interstate 66. He’d driven nearly 200 miles from the shooting scene near Roanoke, Va., apparently tweeting messages and Facebook posts along the way.
By the time police caught up with him, Flanagan was headed toward Washington.
As he’d promised, Flanagan, who’d used the name Bryce Williams at WDBJ7- TV in Roanoke and elsewhere, posted video on his Facebook page showing the shooting from his perspective. The gun is visible, and Parker is seen being shot. Her interview subject, Vicki Gardner, executive director of a chamber of commerce, was wounded. She is likely to recover.
People who knew him said Flanagan had a history of raising concerns about racism in the workplace. He’d been fired from one station in 2000 for allegedly threatening colleagues.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Flanagan had not worked since leaving WDBJ7 in February 2013. He filled the profile’s space for work history from 2013 with a smiley face emoticon.
Jeff Marks, WDBJ7’ s general manager, told The Washington
Post that soon after Flanagan was hired, he “gathered a reputation as someone who was difficult to work with. … He was sort of looking out for people to say things that he could take offense to. And eventually, after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. And he did not take that well. We had to call the police to escort him from the building.”
After his dismissal, Flanagan filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ( EEOC), Marks said, alleging that members of the staff made racial comments. “And none of them could be corroborated by anyone,” he said. “We think they were fabricated.” The EEOC dismissed the claim, Marks said.
A graduate of San Francisco State University, Flanagan first worked at San Francisco’s KPIXTV, where he started as an intern.
He worked at a station in the Midland- Odessa market ( KMID) in Texas, at WTOC in Savannah, as well as WTWC in Tallahassee. He did stints outside journalism at Pacific Gas and Electric and the investigation unit of Bank of America before getting back before the cameras at WDBJ7 in 2012.
Don Shafer, news director at San Diego 6, told USA TODAY that Flanagan was a talented reporter and that he hired him at Tallahassee’s WTWC in 1999 as an evening and weekend anchor. Shafer fired him after 11 months for “conduct unbecoming,” including “bizarre behavior” and threatening employees. After his termination, Flanagan sued the station for racial discrimination, but the lawsuit was dismissed in court, Shafer said.
The shootings took place at 6: 45 a. m., and they took everyone by surprise. Franklin County, Va., Sheriff Bill Overton said he was watching the broadcast when they happened. “It stopped me in my tracks,” he said. “Like many viewers, I was watching and couldn’t figure out right away what happened.”
The victims’ lives had flourished at WDBJ7. Both planned to marry co- workers at the station.
Ward planned to move to Charlotte to follow his fiancée, Melissa Ott, to a media job. It was her final day at the station. Ott, working in the control room during the morning newscast, watched the gruesome attack unfold. As Ward crumpled to the ground, his camera captured the face of his assailant.
Parker was planning to marry Chris Hurst, an anchor at the station. He tweeted shortly after the shooting that he and Parker had dated for about nine months and had just moved in together. “We wanted to get married,” he wrote. “She was the most radiant woman I ever met. And for some reason she loved me back.”
Marks, WDBJ7’ s general manager, said his staff was stunned, but the day’s work continued amid hugs and tears.
“This kind of loss will resonate in these halls for a long, long time as we remember in their short lives what dedicated journalism they produced and what outstanding journalists they were,” he said. “They were just out doing their job today.”
After the shootings, police quickly named Flanagan as the shooter, and around 11 a. m., they found his gray 2009 Mustang at the Roanoke Regional Airport. He had fled the airport in a car he rented this month. Police tracked him to eastbound I- 66 in Fauquier County, Va. Using a license plate scanner, they spotted Flanagan’s car and followed him.
At 11: 09 a. m., Flanagan began tweeting about the shootings, using a Twitter handle with his onair name. Flanagan tweeted that Parker made racist comments and that he’d filed an EEOC complaint. He tweeted that Ward went to human resources about him “after working with me one time!!!”
In his rambling letter to ABC, Flanagan wrote, “Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/ 19/ 15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/ 17/ 15. … What sent me over the top was the church shooting. And my hollow point bullets have the vic- tims’ initials on them.”
Flanagan said “Jehovah” spoke to him, telling him to act. As for the Charleston gunman, Dylann Roof, he said, “You ( deleted)! You want a race war ( deleted)? BRING IT THEN YOU WHITE … ( deleted)!!!”
He wrote, “The church shooting was the tipping point … but my anger has been building steadily. ... I’ve been a human powder keg for a while … just waiting to go BOOM!!!!”
At 11: 14 a. m., Flanagan tweeted about posting to Facebook a 56second video that showed the incident from the gunman’s perspective: The shooter approaches Parker, Ward and Gardner and lifts the gun into view, then begins shooting.
A Virginia state police trooper tried to pull Flanagan over, but he didn’t stop. A minute or two later, Flanagan’s car ran off the road into the median.
When the trooper approached the car, she found that Flanagan had shot himself. He was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment where he was pronounced dead.