The man believed to have fatally shot two Virginia television journalists during a live broadcast Wednesday morning has died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, law enforcement officials said.
The suspect, Vester Flanagan, 41, who was a former reporter at WDBJ-TV, had led police on a car chase and had crashed. Police found him in his car with a gunshot wound.
Before the crash, a social media user who identified himself as Bryce Williams, the former TV reporter and the suspected gunman, posted a video on Facebook and Twitter that appeared to show the shooting from the perspective of the gunman.
According to local media reports, Flanagan used the name Bryce Williams on television.
The video showed a hand holding a gun and firing at the two journalists who worked for WDBJ-TV as they stood filming a live broadcast in southwestern Virginia.
Vicki Gardner, a local Chamber of Commerce employee who was being interviewed, was also injured and was in stable condition at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.
On the social media accounts believed to belong to Williams, who previously had worked for WDBJ, there were complaints that the two victims, reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, had treated him unkindly.
The accounts’ authenticity could not be confirmed, but the video of the shooting appeared to be authentic. Both accounts had existed before the shooting. The Twitter account was created Aug. 13, and the Facebook account posted videos of Williams’ previous TV appearances. Both accounts were suspended Wednesday morning.
A state trooper spotted the suspect’s vehicle traveling on Interstate 66, and the car sped off when the trooper tried to pull it over, the Virginia State Police said in a statement.
“Moments later, the suspect vehicle ran off the road and crashed,” the statement said. The troopers approached the vehicle and found the male driver suffering from a gunshot wound.”
“Vester was an unhappy man,” station manager Jeffrey A. Marks said on the air Wednesday afternoon. “We employed him as a reporter and he had some talent in that respect.”
However, Marks said Flanagan quickly “gathered a reputation as somebody who was difficult to work with. … He was sort of looking out for people to say things that he could take offense to. And eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him, and he did not take that well, and we had to call police to escort him from the building.”
Marks said Flanagan, who is African-American, later filed complaints of racial discrimination at the station, but Marks said the complaints were unsubstantiated.
“None of them could be corroborated by anyone,” Marks said. “We think they were fabricated.”
Parker and Ward were reporting live from the Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, about 25 miles southeast of Roanoke, when shots rang out.
An uploaded video of the live scene on YouTube shows Parker interviewing Gardner about community business growth when about eight shots are heard.
Parker screams and the camera spins and falls to the ground, showing the feet of a man walking toward the news crew at close range. The video then cuts back to a stunned news anchor at the station.
The station said both journalists were from the station’s viewing area. The station is based in Roanoke and serves the southwest and central part of the state.
Parker was a morning reporter at WDBJ, according to station reports. She was a graduate of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., and had been an intern at the station. Ward was engaged to a producer at the station and had graduated from Virginia Tech, the station said.
“Today, we were going to have staff meetings to talk about happy things,” Marks said. “Instead, what we’ll be doing this afternoon is a memorial gathering. … We could never have imagined that that was what our day was going to be like.
“Our teams are working on it through the tears,” he said.
An anchor for the station, Chris Hurst, revealed on Twitter that he was in a relationship with Parker.
“We didn’t share this publicly, but AParkerWDBJ7 and I were very much in love,” Hurst wrote, posting a photo of himself with Parker. “We just moved in together. I am numb.”