Yes, it will sound like I am angry…I am. And I have every right to be.
But when I leave this Earth, the only emotion I want to feel is peace….
These were the words of Vester Lee Flanagan, in a rambling, 23-page fax he sent to ABC News in New York at 8.26 am yesterday morning.
Less than two hours earlier, he had followed a news crew from TV station WDBJ to Bridgewater Plaza, a complex of shops and restaurants overlooking Smith Mountain Lake, a man-made reservoir in Roanoke, Virginia.
“My hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them,” he wrote in his fax.
At 6.45 am, during a live breakfast TV interview, Flanagan crept up behind the crew, and started firing.
In horrifying footage he himself posted online later in the day, he can be seen holding out a handgun, and hovering within a few feet of his targets for a full 20 seconds.
Then, he began shooting.
Flanagan’s former colleagues at WDBJ, 24-year-old reporter Alison Parker and 27-year-old cameraman Adam Ward, were killed at the scene.
Their interviewee, local business leader Vicki Gardner, is recovering in hospital this evening.
Flanagan, pursued by police for several hours, shot himself on Interstate 66, and died in hospital at around lunchtime (6pm Irish time).
Here’s everything we know about the man who called himself “a human powder keg, waiting to go ‘boom’”.
Vester Lee Flanagan II was born on 8 October, 1973. He was 41 years old.
He operated under the pseudonym “Bryce Williams.” He identified as a black, gay man, and claimed he faced discrimination and harassment because of this.
He worked as a reporter and presenter at WDBJ from March 2012 until February 2013, when he was fired.
Flanagan was described by Jeffrey Marks, WDBJ’s president and general manager, as an “an unhappy man” and “difficult to work with,” always “looking out for people to say things he could take offence to.”
“Eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. He did not take that well,” Marks explained, adding that police had to escort him out of the station when he was fired.
Flanagan brought a racial discrimination case against the station to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), but it was entirely dismissed.
On his Twitter account, which was suspended yesterday, he claimed that Adam Ward had reported him to HR at the station.
In his fax to ABC News, which he labelled a “suicide note”, Flanagan claimed that “Jehovah” had spoken to him, and encouraged his actions.
In a tweet posted last week, he said he was raised as a Jehovah’s witness.
Franklin County Sheriff W.Q. “Bill” Overton Jr gave his own initial verdict on Flanagan’s state of mind.
This gentleman was disturbed at the way things had turned out at some point in his life. Things were spiraling out of control.
Flanagan told ABC News he had ordered his gun two days after the North Carolina church massacre in June, when white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine black congregants at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
Apparently addressing Roof, Flanagan wrote: “You want a race war…? Bring it…”
According to his LinkedIn profile, which has since been deleted, Flanagan worked in 10 different companies over the last 20 years, in states including California, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.
He called himself a “Broadcast media professional”, and worked mainly as a news reporter and presenter at TV stations, although he also held customer service positions.
Kimberly Moore Wilmoth worked with Flanagan in 1999 at Tallahassee TV station WTWC. She described him as “off-kilter” and said “he didn’t laugh at our jokes or at himself when he would make a mistake.”
Wilmoth describes Flanagan as a loner who didn’t socialise with other reporters, and got angry when co-workers made light of on-air mistakes.
She recounted one incident in which he filmed an elderly man trapped inside a car during a flood, even though the man was calling out for help.
Instead of helping the man, he used the man as a prop.
The RT website uncovered this showreel of Flanagan’s work as a TV news reporter.
Most recently, Flanagan worked in a health insurance call centre.
UnitedHealthcare spokesman Matt Burns said this evening that he worked for the company in Roanoke from September 2013 until November 2014.
TheJournal.ie has uncovered evidence of at least three lawsuits taken by Flanagan.
In 2000, he sued his former employer, WTWC, for racial discrimination and retaliation.
The complaint, which demanded $15,000 in damages, includes claims that he was called a “monkey” by one producer, and that other staff directed racially-tinged remarks at him.
It was settled out of court, and yesterday Don Schafer, who hired him at WTWC, described “odd behaviour” by Flanagan.
He was a good on-air performer, a pretty good reporter. And then things started getting a little strange.
I know that there were some issues with him and his personality that kind of (spiralled) down, and that’s why we had to get rid of him.
In 2001, Flanagan sued California Federal Bank for unknown causes. The case was thrown out of court within three months.
Contains reporting by the Associated Press.
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