Flanagan was pronounced dead around 1:30 p.m. at Inova Fairfax Hospital, authorities said.
Flanagan was a former employee of the station and had worked with the victims. He was fired in 2013, the station’s manager said. Both Parker and Ward lived in the Roanoke area. Parker’s father — Andy Parker — said “my grief is unbearable.”
© Courtesy of WDBJ-TV via AP
This undated photograph made available by WDBJ-TV shows reporter Alison
Parker, left, and cameraman Adam Ward. Parker and Ward were fatally
shot during an on-air interview, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015, in Moneta…
At an afternoon press conference, authorities said they are still trying
to figure out the exact motive for the shooting and how Flanagan knew
the two would be broadcasting live from that location. A sheriff
official said Flanagan was “disturbed in some way.”
“It would appear things were spiraling out of control,” said Fanklin County Sheriff Bill Overton at the news conference.Officials said they are not sure that Ward and Parker even knew Flanagan was there before the shooting began. They also said they believe Flanagan sent a lengthy, multi-page fax to a national news organization in New York about the incident and that investigators now have a copy of it. Authorities said the incident is still under investigation.
Flanagan is believed to have posted on social media videos showing him shooting the two television reporters. Screenshots taken before the video was removed from the Internet showed a gun pointed at Parker as she interviewed an official — Vicki Gardner — who helps run a local chamber of commerce group and asked her about tourism.
The incident began about 6:45 a.m. The station they worked for said Ward and Parker had worked together before and were killed as they were doing a live shot at Bridgewater Plaza — a shopping and entertainment center near Smith Mountain Lake in Franklin County — to commemorate its 50th anniversary.
© Jay Paul/Getty Images Police work the crime scene at Bridgewater Plaza on Smith Mountain Lake on August 26, 2015 in Moneta, Virginia. Two employees of WDBJ TV were killed this morning during a live broadcast. The victims have been… At the news conference, authorities said they received a 911 call for reports of shots fired at the plaza, but Flanagan had left the scene before sheriff deputies arrived. That lead to an intense manhunt. Authorities said they were able to identify Flanagan as the gunman based on information from the television station.
Around 11 a.m., authorities said they located Flanagan’s greyish-colored, 2009 Mustang at the Roanake Regional Airport. Flanagan fled the airport in another car — a Chevrolet Sonic, which officials said he rented earlier in the month. He was tracked in that vehicle along Interstate 81 and then later located on Interstate 66 in Fauquier County using a license plate reader.
A law enforcement official spotted Flanagan in the car and followed him. The Virginia State Police trooper tried to pull Flanagan over but he did not stop and fled. A minute or two later, Flanagan’s car ran off the road into the median. When the trooper approached the car, she found Flanagan had suffered from a self-inflicted gun shot wound. He was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Video of the shooting shows Parker interviewing Gardner. Shots rang out and screams are heard. The shooting was captured on camera by Ward before he apparently dropped the camera. Another news anchor who was in the newsroom can be seen in shock and disbelief as she tried to figure out what happened on live television.
Jeff Marks, the station’s general manager, said the two were on the scene, reporting live when “someone with a gun barged into where they were.” He said it is believed that the gunman fired six or seven shots.
“We heard screaming and then we heard nothing,” he said on air. “The camera fell.”
Gardner — the exeutive director of the chamber — was taken to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where she underwent surgery. She is expected to recover. Jessica Gauldin, vice chairman of the chamber of commerce and was in the hospital with Gardner’s family and friends, said Gardner had suffered some “internal damage, but she’s stabilized right now and it looks good.” She was said to be in stable condition by mid-afternoon Wednesday.
A man who claimed to be the gunman sent ABC News a 23-page letter on Wednesday morning saying he was motivated by the mass shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church last month, according to the network.
“Why did I do it?” stated the fax, which was received shortly before 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday. “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…”
The document goes on to state: “What sent me over the top was the church shooting. And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them.”
In the letter, excerpts of which were posted online by ABC News, the author references several gunmen who have carried out mass shootings across the United States. He writes that he was “influenced” by the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 and refers positively to the two teenagers who killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in 1999, according to ABC.
At the Roanoke television station, where the two worked colleagues turned their broadcasts throughout the day into news updates and tributes to Parker and Ward. It had turned into a day of tragedy for those at the station as they tried to report the news and hide their tears.
“Our hearts are broken,” said Marks. He said the two were “just out doing a story today.”
Flanagan said in his LinkedIn profile — under the name Bryce Williams — that he had worked at several TV stations, mostly in the South since the mid-1990s. He also had jobs in marketing and customer relations.
He said he joined WDBJ in March 2012. But Marks said that after months of disruptive behavior, Flanagan was fired in February 2013 and ushered out of the station by police. He did not give details as to what the behavior problems involved.
Flanagan “did not take that well,” he said from his station’s studio at the anchor desk. Marks described him as “an unhappy man.”
“We employed him as a reporter, and he had some talent in that respect, and some experience, although he had been out of the business for a while when we hired him here,” Marks said. “He quickly became — 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,” Marks recalled. “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.
“Since then –well, he then fired an action with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in which he made all kinds of complaints. And there may have been one about Alison and/or Adam – I frankly don’t remember – but about members of the staff making racial comments. He was African American. And none of them could be corroborated by anyone. We think they were fabricated.” The EEOC claim was dismissed, according to Marks.
“So we had an unhappy former employee. But this happens. And usually they move on. Sometimes they’re just not suited for the work, and they move on and get a job somewhere else. But he remained in town, because every now and then someone would run into him at the grocery store or someplace like that.
“But,” Marks said, “I don’t recall getting a report of any run-ins or difficult situations … so there was not a lot of concern.”
Marks added, “You can never imagine someone would come back and act on those.”
At one of the places where Flanagan said he once worked — WNCT in Greenville — John Lewis, the general manager there said Flanagan had worked a producer, reporter and anchor from 2002 to 2004 but said he could offer no more details. “There’s no one here anymore who knows him or worked with him,” Lewis said.
For those at the station and the family of those who were killed it was a tough time as they reflected on Ward and Parker.
Ward, a 2011 Virginia Tech graduate, was known to hear of news even on his way home and stop, turn around and go help report.
Parker is a 2012 graduate of James Madison University in Virginia, according to the station. She grew up near Martinsville. Before joining WDBJ7, she worked in Jacksonville, N.C.
Parker and Ward were both engaged to other co-workers at the station.
It was supposed to be a day of celebration because Ward’s fiancee Melissa Ott, who was working in the station’s control room when the shooting happened and saw the incident unfold, was having her last day there. She was taking a job at a station in Charlotte, N.C., and Ward was expected to follow her.
Chris Hurst, an anchor at WDBJ7, tweeted shortly after the shooting that he and Parker had “just moved in together,” and had been dating for about nine months. “We wanted to get married,” he wrote.
Fellow reporters at the station described Parker as kind, friendly and a “rock star reporter.”
[Alison Parker, 24, killed on the air, was a gifted TV reporter]
Marks said Ward’s fiancee was in the control room when the shooting happened.
Ott said on her Facebook page that she and Ward got engaged on Dec. 20, 2014. Photos she posted show the smiling couple enjoying sporting events and tailgating. Ward is seen wearing gear from Virginia Tech.
[Cameraman Adam Ward, 27, was planning to get married before he was killed outside Roanoke]
According to his LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, Ward joined the WDBJ staff in 2011. He had graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in communication and media studies. He enrolled at Virginia Tech in 2007 — the same year of a shooting at the campus there that left 32 people dead and more than two dozen wounded. This past April, eight days before the eighth anniversary of the campus massacre, Ward changed his Facebook profile picture to an image of the school’s logo and a black ribbon.
In a statement, officials with the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce asked for Gardner to be kept in prayers.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe noted that his family had just vacationed at Smith Mountain Lake and used the tragedy to repeat his support for tighter gun control.
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