26 August 2015

Virginia reporter records himself killing former colleagues

The Slatest has an article by Ben Mathis-Lilley about a live-on-television killing:

Two of the victims of the shooting. The third, the interview's subject, was taken for emergency surgery.

Here's what's known at the moment about a recent on-air shooting;
Roanoke, Virginia station WDBJ7 reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were shot and killed at approximately 6:45 am. At the moment of the shooting, Parker was interviewing a Chamber of Commerce figure named Vicki Gardner on live television in Moneta, Virginia. Gardner was reportedly shot in the back and is in stable condition after surgery.
The sound of gunfire was captured on the live broadcast, though no wounds or injuries were visible before Ward dropped his camera. The camera captured a brief image of the shooter.
The suspect in the shooting is a man named Vester Flanagan, who formerly worked for WDBJ7 as a reporter and appeared on air using the name Bryce Williams.
A first-person recording of the shooting apparently taken with a GoPro-like device was posted to Twitter and Facebook accounts under the name Bryce Williams. The Twitter account accused Parker of having made a racist comment at some point in the past and said Ward had complained about Flanagan/Williams to WDBJ7's human resources department.
Flanagan was spotted on Interstate 66 in or around Markham, Virginia by police and crashed after a brief chase. He reportedly suffered what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound and is in critical condition. Markham is approximately two hundred miles from the site where Parker, Ward, and Gardner were shot.
WDBJ7, the outlet that the victims worked for, has cited state police in retracting its report that Williams/Flanagan died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He is said to be in critical condition.
The interview that was interrupted at approximately 6:45 am was a seemingly innocuous one about a shopping center.
Alison Parker, the WDBJ7 reporter, was 24. Adam Ward, the cameraman, was 27. Interview subject Vicki Gardner, the executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce, was reportedly shot in the back and taken for emergency surgery.
An anchor at the station, Chris Hurst, tweeted that he and Parker were "very much in love" and had recently moved in together. Hurst also said that Ward, the cameraman, was engaged to be married. CNN says Ward's fiancée is a newsroom producer at WDBJ7.
Rico says it's another Southern love saga... (And, with a name like Vester Flanagan, who would love you?)

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