![]() He got NEARLY double the amount that (Columbine killers) Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got … just sayin'." He quoted the Virginia Tech mass killer, Seung Hui Cho: "That's my boy right there. As for the Charleston gunman, Dylann Roof, he said, "You (deleted)! You want a race war (deleted)? BRING IT THEN YOU WHITE … (deleted)!!!" And my hollow point bullets have the victims' initials on them."įlanagan said "Jehovah" spoke to him, telling him to act. … What sent me over the top was the church shooting. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15. 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. He tweeted that Ward went to human resources about him "after working with me one time!!!" Flanagan tweeted that Parker made racist comments and that he'd filed an EEOC complaint. Both were engaged to co-workers at WDBJ.Īt 11:09 a.m., Flanagan began tweeting about the shootings, using a Twitter handle with his on-air name. The victims' lives had flourished at the station. "Like many viewers, I was watching and couldn't figure out right away what happened." Franklin County, Va., Sheriff Bill Overton said he was watching the broadcast when they happened. The shootings took place at 6:45 a.m., and they took everyone by surprise. After his termination, Flanagan sued the station for racial discrimination, but the lawsuit was dismissed in court, Shafer said. Shafer fired him after 11 months for "conduct unbecoming," including "bizarre behavior" and threatening employees. 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 WDBJ in 2012.ĭon 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. ![]() He worked at a station in the Midland-Odessa market (KMID) in Texas, at WTOC in Savannah, as well as WTWC in Tallahassee. "We think they were fabricated." The EEOC dismissed the claim, Marks said.Ī graduate of San Francisco State University, Flanagan first worked at San Francisco's KPIX-TV, where he started as an intern. "And none of them could be corroborated by anyone," he said. We had to call the police to escort him from the building."Īfter 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 eventually, after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. … He was sort of looking out for people to say things that he could take offense to. Jeff Marks, WDBJ'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 faxed a 23-page, expletive-ridden letter to ABC News, saying he'd bought his gun and hollow-point bullets two days after the mass shootings June 17 at a Charleston, S.C., church. He tweeted to complain that the dead reporter, who was white, was a racist and that the cameraman, also white, had filed a complaint about him with the station's human resources department. 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.Īs police undertook a massive manhunt, Flanagan took to social media and sent out jittery videos of the shooting from his point of view. ![]() 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. Even the sheriff was watching the broadcast when the shots rang out. The shootings shattered that most routine of morning rituals, the early morning stand-up interview with the head of the local chamber of commerce. 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 grim narrative that unfolded Wednesday was shocking to watch. Short and unpunctuated, it read, "I filmed the shooting see Facebook" 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. ![]()
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