MU journalism students questioned their safety Wednesday morning after two WDBJ7 journalists were shot dead this morning on live television.
Former WDBJ employee Vester Flanagan was the primary suspect. Flanagan died in the hospital in Fairfax, Virginia, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at around 1:30 p.m.
WDBJ reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward were interviewing Vicki Gardner around 6:45 a.m. when Flanagan allegedly shot the three victims with a Glock 19 handgun. Gardner’s screams are heard as the suspected shooter briefly enters the camera’s view dressed in black. The live broadcast was quickly cut as the camera fell to the floor.
After rushed to the hospital, Parker and Ward were pronounced dead while Gardner underwent emergency surgery. She is recovering from a bullet wound in her back.
WDBJ general manager Jeff Marks announced on air the deaths of the young journalists about a half hour later. Flanagan was a previous WDBJ reporter who was known on air as Bryce Williams before being fired from the station two years ago. Many officials hypothesize that his leave from the station is the alleged motivation behind the brutal act of on-air violence.
“Two years ago, we had to separate him from the company,” Marks said. “We did understand that he was still living in the same area.”
Marks also described Flanagan as an “unhappy man.”
“After many incidents of his anger coming forward we dismissed him,” he said.
MU journalism students grieved and commented on the shooting that occurred early Wednesday morning.
“It’s really scary, but I think events like this are really rare so I don’t feel as a journalist that we are personally in danger,” MU freshman journalism student Connor Lagore said. “I think that stations and journalistic outlets should do a better job screening potential employees as a precaution against future acts of violence.”
KOMU News Director Randy Reeves sent out a mass email regarding the tragedy.
“It hit us all in the face like a brick this morning,” Reeves said in the email. “This one strike close to home, because the victims look so much like us. We have everything in common with them. It hurts my heart. It’s legitimately scary.”
Reeves also advocated for safety in the field of journalistic reporting.
“Look to tell the human story of the victim,” Reeves said. “We owe them that much.”
Ariel Sierra, an MU sophomore majoring in broadcast journalism and sociology, did not find the shooting directly concerning to the field of journalism.
“I think the whole situation is very upsetting,” Sierra said. “I do not think that this is an issue just regarding journalism. Something like this can happen in any field.”
Almost two hours after killing Parker and Ward, Flanagan faxed ABC News a 23-page long manifesto entitled “Suicide Note for Friends and Family.” In the suicide note he claims his reasons for the bloodshed was because he was agitated by the church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina.
In the lengthy fax, Flanagan also attested that he was treated unfairly at WDBJ due to his race and sexual orientation, which he also mentioned in numerous tweets on his Twitter page, under the handle @Bryce_williams7.
Flanagan tweeted “Alison made racist comments,” and “ Adam went to hr on me after working with me one time!!!”
On the suspect’s Twitter page is slew of disquieting photographs taken at the scene of the shooting by Flanagan himself. In one photograph, taken from his focal perspective, his gun is pointed directly at the center of Parker’s chest during her interview.
“Yes, it will sound like I am angry,” wrote Flanagan in his fax to ABC News. “I am. And I have every right to be. But when I leave this Earth, the only emotion I want to feel is peace.”
Ward worked at WDBJ since 2011 and was recently engaged to Melissa Ott, a producer at WDBJ.
Parker was a young promising reporter, who graduated only a mere three years earlier from James Madison University, and hoped to eventually report on the national level.
She and her boyfriend Chris Hurst, an anchor at WDBJ, had just moved in together. Hurst wrote on his twitter, “We wanted to get married. She was the most radiant woman I ever met. And for some reason she loved me back.”
Her family is currently grieving the loss of their talented young daughter, who was described by her college classmates as having an “it” factor.
“She’d appreciate the irony of how she has gone national, but not in the way she wanted,” Parker’s father said in an [Aug. 27 Washington Post article.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/alison-parker-24-killed-on-the-air-while-reporting-near-roanoke/2015/08/26/930438e4-4bff-11e5-84df-923b3ef1a64b_story.html)
