He stated that he has been attacked by black men and white females, and criticized for being a gay.
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According to Mediaite, WDBJ’s station manager, Jeff Marks, described Flanagan as an “unhappy man”, who had a reputation of being “difficult to work with”, but admitted that he was a talented journalist.
Childhood pictures of Vester Lee Flanagan II showed no hint of the monster he was to become but he was a veteran anchorman with a history of workplace grievances.
Flanigan allegedly shot and killed at close range reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, in the middle of a live interview early Wednesday.
He went onto graduate from San Francisco State University in 1995 with a degree in radio and television and a 20 year reporting career followed. Flanagan, who had been a weekend news anchor and night reporter three days each week, was recently reassigned as a full-time reporter on weekdays. “Lol”, he said in another tweet.
“They were largely along racial lines, and we did a thorough investigation and could find no evidence that anyone had racially discriminated against this man”, said Dennison.
In the hours after the shooting, Flanagan posted chilling video of the incident on his Twitter account, along with several messages indicating a personal grudge against the victims. Those social media accounts were later suspended.
The video does not show who is holding the recording device.
Authorities said as Flanagan fled the scene, he posted the video on Facebook and Twitter. The person recording hovers for a few moments just beside where the TV crew is working. “They could have overlapped, I just don’t have a strong recollection of that”, he said.
“He was a good on-air performer, a pretty good reporter”.
Dan Dennison told CNN affiliate KHNL in Honolulu that he was the news director who hired Williams at WBDJ in 2012 and then fired him the following year, mostly for performance issues.
Flanagan said that after complaining to supervisors about insensitive comments, he filed a formal complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations last December. Police said the troopers approached and found the driver suffering from a gunshot wound. The case was later settled. He was fired from the station, though the reason was not made public, the ex-employee said.
In the note, Flanagan expressed admiration for Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, and used a similar gun to Cho, according to anonymous sources cited by ABC News.
He apparently said Jehovah spoke to him and told him to act. “The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15…What sent me over the top was the church shooting”, he said, referencing the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal shooting that killed nine worshippers at a black church in South Carolina in June.
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“Why did I do it?”
