A man who shot dead a TV reporter and cameraman during a live news broadcast in the US told authorities afterwards he was a "human powder keg...just waiting to go boom!"
In a rambling letter sent to ABC News after former colleagues were gunned down at a shopping centre in Moneta, central Virginia, Vester Lee Flanagan cited a long list of grievances, dating back to the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech and the more recent massacre of worshippers at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"I've been a human powder keg for a while," 41-year-old Flanagan wrote in the note, "just waiting to go BOOM!!!!"
The man described as a "loner" by former colleagues was later found with a gunshot wound after his car crashed following a police chase. He died in hospital.
US President Barack Obama said the shooting was heartbreaking.
He said "it breaks my heart every time" he reads or hears about these kinds of incidents.
"What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism," he added.
Police said Flanagan had bought the gun legally.
Flanagan, who used the on-air name Bryce Williams, was a former employee at TV channel WDBJ-TV. According to officials, he was known for being unhappy, angry and hard to work with, and had been sacked.
He had been fired from at least two stations for conflicts with colleagues who described him as an "off-kilter" loner easily angered by office humour.
When he was sacked from WDBJ in Virginia in 2013, he had to be escorted out of the building by local police "because he was not going to leave willingly or under his own free will," said the station's former news director, Dan Dennison.
Flanagan had "a long series of complaints against co-workers nearly from the beginning of employment at the TV station," said Mr Dennison. "All of these allegations were deemed to be unfounded. And 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."
The victims of Wednesday's shooting - reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward - were white; Flanagan was black.
A third person, Vicki Gardner of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce, who was being interviewed by Ms Parker, was injured in the shooting.
Ms Parker's father said the shootings had left the family "numb"..
Andy Parker said his daughter "excelled at everything she did".
The conflict described by Mr Dennison in many ways echoed another, in 2000, when Flanagan was fired from a north Florida television station in 2000 after threatening fellow employees, a former supervisor said.
Flanagan "was a good on-air performer, a pretty good reporter and then things started getting a little strange with him," said Don Shafer, the former news director of Florida's WTWC-TV.
He said managers at the Florida station fired Flanagan because of his "bizarre behaviour".
In 2000, Flanagan sued the Florida station over allegations of race discrimination. The parties later reached a settlement.
Before and after his job in Florida, Flanagan worked at a series of stations around the country, sometimes for just a few months at a time.
After Wednesday's shootings, the Franklin County Sheriff's Office said that video recorded by the station's camera shows Flanagan holding a weapon.
Video shows Ms Parker carrying out an interview about tourism on Bridgewater Plaza in Franklin County. She smiles before at least eight shots are heard. The camera appears to drop to the ground and the reporter can be heard screaming.
The station then switches back to a shot of a presenter back at the station, who has a shocked expression on her face.
The gunman later posted a video he filmed of the shootings.
The chilling footage shows a gun in his hand, pointing at Ms Parker and her attempting to flee when he opens fire.
The Twitter account used to post the video also included the comments "I filmed the shooting see Facebook", "Adam went to (human resources) on me after working with me one time!!!" and "Alison made racist comments. EEOC report filed. They hired her after that???"
Mr Ward was 27 and a graduate of Virginia Tech, while Ms Parker had just turned 24 and attended James Madison University.
Mr Ward was engaged to a producer at the station, Melissa Ott, who was celebrating her last day on the job and was in the control room, watching it live, as the shooting unfolded.
Ms Parker's boyfriend was WDBJ anchor Chris Hurst.
He said they had just moved in together and wanted to get married. "I am numb," he said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel