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 The suspect, 41-year-old Vester Flanagan, shot himself as police
pursued him on a Virginia highway hours after the shooting.
Flanagan, who was African-American, died later at a hospital, police
said.
The journalists who were killed were reporter Alison Parker, 24, and
cameraman Adam Ward, 27. Both journalists were white, as is a woman
who they were interviewing. The woman was wounded and was in stable
condition, a hospital spokesman said.
Social media postings by a person who appeared to be Flanagan
indicated the suspect had grievances against the station, CBS
affiliate WDBJ7 in Roanoke, Virginia, which let him go two years
ago. The person also posted video that appeared to show the attack
filmed from the gunman's vantage point.
Flanagan sent ABC News a 23-page fax about two hours after the
shooting, saying his attack was triggered by the June 17 mass
shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the
network said. Nine people were killed, and a white man has been
charged in that rampage.
 The network cited Flanagan as saying he had suffered racial
discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work. He had been
attacked by black men and white women, and for being a gay black
man, he said.
"The church shooting was the tipping point ... but my anger has been
building steadily," ABC News cited the fax as saying. "I've been a
human powder keg for a while ... just waiting to go BOOM!"
The on-air shooting occurred at about 6:45 a.m. EDT at Bridgewater
Plaza, a Smith Mountain Lake recreation site about 200 miles (320
km) southwest of Washington.
The broadcast was abruptly interrupted by the sound of gunshots as
Parker and the woman being interviewed, Vicki Gardner, executive
director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce,
screamed and ducked for cover.
Hours after the shooting, someone claiming to have filmed it posted
video online. The videos were posted to a Twitter account and on
Facebook by a man identifying himself as Bryce Williams, which was
Flanagan's on-air name.
The videos were removed shortly afterward. In one video, a handgun
was clearly visible as the person filming approached the female
reporter.
The person purporting to be Williams also posted, "I filmed the
shooting see Facebook" as well as saying one of the victims had
"made racist comments."
In the fax to ABC News, Flanagan praised shooters who had carried
out mass killings at Virginia Tech University in 2007 and at
Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999.
ABC News said Flanagan called the network shortly after 10 a.m.
Flanagan said he had shot two people and that police were after him,
and then hung up. ABC News then contacted authorities and turned
over the fax, which had arrived about 90 minutes earlier, the
network said.
 SHOT HIMSELF AS POLICE CLOSED IN
Flanagan shot himself as Virginia State Police were closing in on a
rental car on Interstate 66 in Fauquier County, WDBJ7 said. State
police said the suspect refused to stop when spotted by troopers and
sped away.
Minutes later, the suspect's vehicle ran off the road and crashed,
police said in a statement, adding that troopers approached the
vehicle to find the driver with a gunshot wound. He was taken to
Inova Fairfax Hospital near Washington, where he died.
"It's obvious that this gentleman was disturbed in some way at the
way things had transpired at some part of his life," Franklin County
Sheriff Bill Overton told a news conference.
"It appears things were spiraling out of control, but we’re still
looking into that," he said. "We still have a lengthy investigation
to conduct and that's our focus as we move forward."
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Flanagan had sued another station where he worked in Florida for
alleged racial discrimination.
Flanagan said he was called a "monkey" by a producer in the lawsuit
filed in federal court against Tallahassee station WTWC in 2000. He
also said a supervisor at the station called black people lazy. The
Florida case was settled and dismissed the next year, court records
show.
WDBJ7 President and General Manager Jeff Marks said he knew of no
particular connection between Flanagan and the two slain
journalists.
Speaking to CNN about Flanagan, he added, "Do you imagine that
everyone who leaves your company under difficult circumstances is
going to take aim?"
"Why were they (Parker and Ward) the targets, and not I or somebody
else in management?" he said.
The station's early morning broadcast showed Parker interviewing
Gardner about the lake and tourism development in the area. Gunshots
erupted, and as Ward fell his camera hit the ground but kept
running. An image caught on camera showed what appeared to be a man
in dark clothing facing the camera with a weapon in his right hand.
The station described the two dead journalists as an ambitious
reporter-and-cameraman team who often produced light and breezy
feature stories for the morning program.
"I cannot tell you how much they were loved," Marks said.
They were both engaged to be married to other people at the station.
"My heart goes out to the families affected," President Barack Obama
said in a television interview in New Orleans, adding that such gun
violence occurs "all too often in this country."
He said the United States needs to do "a better job of making sure
that people who have problems, people who shouldn't have guns, don't
have them."
Roanoke-area residents brought flowers and food to the WDBJ7 studio
late on Wednesday, and parishioners at the Bethlehem United
Methodist Church in Moneta, near the scene of the shooting, held a
prayer vigil for Gardner.
On-air WDBJ7 personalities, who earlier acknowledged holding back
tears as they reported on the deaths of their colleagues, said local
ministers had reached out offering support.
According to his social media sites, Flanagan attended San Francisco
State University. A university spokesman said he graduated in 1995
with a degree in radio and television.
(Reporting by Emily Flitter, Laila Kearney and Barbara Goldberg in
New York and Ian Simpson in Washington; Writing by Frances Kerry and
Steve Gorman; Editing by Scott Malone, Jeffrey Benkoe and Lisa
Shumaker)
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