TV killer ‘took victim’s innocent comments as racist slurs’

THE US television reporter shot dead on air by a former colleague may have been murdered for using everyday phrases which her killer interpreted as racist slants.

Alison Parker, 24 had apparently suggest to Vester Flanagan — who used the on-screen name Bryce Williams – that they visit a road which he believed had a racist name. “Alison and Bryce were out with a group, I think on a story or something, and Alison suggested they ‘ swing by a street’ that was called Cotton Road,” said Ryan Fuqua, a video editor at the WDBJ news station.

Flanagan, who was black, took offence, believing that Parker was making an oblique and racist joke reference to slavery and cotton fields.

A memo circulated internally at WDBJ on Flanagan’s anger issues supports this account. “One [comment] was something about ‘swinging’ by some place; the other was out in the ‘field,’ ” said a report made by Greg Baldwin, assistant news director, seen by the

In a ranting 24-page suicide note, and in comments on Twitter sent after his killing spree, Flanagan recalled Parker’s innocuous comment, saying she was making references to cotton fields or describing him as a monkey.

Throughout his time at WDBJ and in an unsuccessful lawsuit after, Flanagan made complaints about what he perceived to be racist remarks. None were substantiated. The station said in a statement: “All investigations determined that no reasonable person would have taken any of the cited instances as discrimination or harassment.”

In other accounts by former colleagues, Flanagan is said to have spun into a rage when a photographer offered him a watermelon-flavoured drink, somehow perceiving the drink and its flavour as an insult.

He would also become abusive if editors made changes to his stories.

In the two years after he was fired, Flanagan lived alone only a few hundred yards from the television station. He worked at Health United, a medical insurance firm, but is understood to have been dismissed from there in February 2014.

Three or four months ago, Flanagan wrote a long letter to the manager of a nearby burger restaurant, criticising the staff for using the phrase “have a nice day” instead of “thank you”.

But WDBJ remained his main obsession. The only personal items in his home were photographs of himself from the time he worked as a journalist, stuck onto the door of his fridge.

On Wednesday, Flanagan set about exacting his revenge.

Mr Fuqua believes that, after murdering Parker and Adam Ward, 27, a cameraman, live on air, he had intended to target another former colleague, a girl who had once asked him to be quiet. “I think, if he hadn’t crashed in the police chase, he might have been on his way to kill her,” he said.