Sacked reporter kills two co-workers on live TV coverage
http://www.gatewaymail.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Killed-television-station-workers..jpgUS: A SACKED reporter of a television station, two years after losing his job, shot dead his former colleagues while the duo were broadcasting a live interview.
President Barack Obama, in his prompt reaction, described the shoting as heartbreaking.
“What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism,” Obama added.
Vester Lee Flanagan, said to be quick at picking quarrel with co-workers
before he was sacked, fired 15 shots to cut short the lives of reporter, Alison Parker – who was 24 – and her cameraman, 27-year-old Adam Ward, who worked for a US WDBJ Channel 7 television station.
The station, owned by Schurz Communications, is a CBS-affiliated media house on Roanoke, Virginia.
The interviewee, Vicki Gardner, who also was shot, later undergone surgery on Wednesday and she is said to be in stable condition, and on her way to quick recovery.
Immediately after the horrendous killing, Flanagan, who was known as Bryce Williams as air name, fled the scene, but surprisingly posted the 56 seconds recorded murder video on his Facebook and Twitter.
The 41-year-old Flanagan, who afterwards died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds after he was later pursued by policemen, in the self-recorded video, pointed his gun at Parker and then Ward, and fired when the duo were already on live interview coverage.
It was believed that Flanagan, fired two years ago, had planned the killing of his former colleagues as ABC news explained that using the name, Bryce Williams, the killer phoned the station asking for fax number to send a story to.
Eventually, he sent a 23-page fax to the station, referring to himself as “a gay black man who had been mistreated by people of all races.”
He told the station that he purchased a gun couple of days after the killing of nine black people in the June 17, 2015 deadly shooting in a Charleston church.
The WDBJ President and General Manager, Jeffrey Marks, described the killer as a sad man who was difficult to work with, as he was always “looking out for people to say things he could take offence to.”
“Eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him,” Marks said. “He did not take that well.”
The President added that police was called to escort Flanagan out of the station as he refused to quit the television premises the day he was sacked.
