Alison Parker, a 24-year-old reporter, and Adam Ward, a 27-year-old cameraman, were conducting a live interview for WDBJ7 when they were fatally shot by 41-year-old Vester Lee Flanagan in Moneto, Virgina at the Bridgewater Plaza Shopping Center.
Advertisement
In documents obtained by ABC News, Virginia shooter Flanagan, known on-air as Bryce Williams, faxed documents to answer for his actions.
Nikki Haley, after learning the gunman who killed two journalists blamed the act on the Charleston church shooting, said people who attempt to shake the foundation of what makes us great are failing. Two days after that June shooting, in which nine black parishioners were killed by a white supremacist, he “put down a deposit for a gun”.
Other reports indicate that Ward’s fiancée worked at the station as well, and saw the shooting live in the control room as it happened. “And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them”, he continued.
ABC News said he also expressed admiration for the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, and said he also was influenced by Seung-Hui Cho, the student who carried out a mass killing at Virginia Tech University in April 2007.
Flanagan says that, “Hell yeah, I made mistakes”, noting that he “should not have been so curt” with photographers in Roanoke.
About Cho, he said, “That’s my boy right there”. He got almost double the amount that Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got…just sayin’.
According to Flanagan’s suicide note, he saw himself as a victim of white man oppression and violence directed at black men, exemplified by the Dylan Roof shooting over the summer targeting black parishioners. He never told ABC News what the story was specifically about.
“Yes, it will sound like I am angry…I am”. He then claimed to have shot two people that morning, and mentioned that the police were pursuing him at the moment.
Vicki Gardner of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce was also injured in the shooting. And I have every right to be. “I’ve been a human powder keg for a while … just waiting to go BOOM!!!! at any moment”. “I don’t want that to happen”.
The revelation comes after news this afternoon that Flanagan had mortally succumbed to a self inflected gun wound (circa 11.30 am upon being cornered by police) after initially surviving the gunshot only to die hours later at a Northern Virginia hospital.
Flanagan wrote in the rambling manifesto that his anger at being discriminated against because of his race and sexual orientation had been building over the years.
Advertisement
CNN reported on Wednesday that Flanagan had applied for a journalism job at their network but had been rejected.
