In a press release Friday, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia said they continue to investigate the shooting that claimed the lives of Alison Parker, 24, and Adam Ward, 27, both employees at WDBJ-TV.
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McAuliffe started by saying he had met with the team at WDBJ and that their courage and determination was extraordinary.
Dan Dennison described Flanagan, who shot and killed a reporter and a cameraman on live television last Wednesday, as a “professional victim” during his time at the station before being fired in 2013.
“There are too many guns in America and there’s clearly too many guns in the wrong hands”.
A letter from Flanagan to ABC cited race as a cause for his actions, but many experts, including staff at WDBJ, have also questioned his mental health, and if there were signs that might have prevented this tragedy.
Don Shafer, who had previously worked with Flanagan at WTWC-TV in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1999, said he had previously had a number of conflicts with co-workers.
“It’s not the big things that get to us, it’s the little ones”, Zuber said.
Flanagan shot himself on a highway in northern Virginia.
Others crossed Flanagan in seemingly mundane incidents after his firing.
Her family also expressed condolences to the families of Parker and Ward, and said they are “heartbroken” at their loss.
Also found were a briefcase with contents that included three license tags, a wig and a shawl.
“We did a thorough investigation and could find no evidence that anyone had racially discriminated against this man, ” Dennison said. His colleagues said he rarely, if ever, missed a game.
Mark Sichel, a New York-based psychotherapist and author, said Flanagan was a classic “injustice collector”, a person whose fragile ego leads to paranoid behavior, such as overreacting to perceived slights and creating enemy lists, as a protective mechanism.
“They were in our house every morning”, Trisha Stump of Roanoke said simply, and over these past few days people have put roses, candles, notes and balloons in front of their station. “But she wasn’t sure he was gone, so she just laid there playing possum until first responders showed up”.
Others who crossed paths with Flanagan during that time, said he took offense easily.
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Some politicians are now calling for closing loopholes for purchasing weapons. At San Francisco State University, Flanagan relished being in the spotlight during group presentations. “He never had any problems, no fights, nothing like that”, said a high school classmate, Chris Dobbins, now an Oakland attorney.
