The ex-boss of the man alleged to have killed two former colleagues during a live newscast on Wednesday in Virginia said he remembered the suspect as “an unhappy man” and said police had to escort him from the building when the station fired him.
Television station general manager Jeff Marks described former WDBJ employee Vester Flanagan – who police say opened fire on a live newscast early Wednesday morning, killing two journalists – on Wednesday as “an unhappy man,” and said police had to escort him from the building when the station fired him.
Flanagan, who went by the name Bryce Williams on the air, was reportedly employed at television station WDBJ from 2012 to 2013 as a multimedia journalist.
Television station general manager Jeff Marks told CNN on Wednesday afternoon that Flanagan had a reputation for angry outbursts and being difficult to work with.
“Vester was an unhappy man. We employed him as a reporter and he had some talent in that respect and some experience,” Marks said. “He quickly gathered a reputation of someone who was difficult to work with. He was sort of looking out to people to say things he could take offense to. Eventually, after many incidents of his anger, we dismissed him. He did not take that well. We had to call police to escort him from the building.”
Marks also said he believed Flanagan had fabricated incidents of racial discrimination during his time at the station.
Marks also told CNN he did not believe Flanagan had showed up at the station after his dismissal, and did not think there were any active threats.
Shortly after the shooting, social media accounts registered to the name Bryce Williams posted graphic first-person video of WDBJ journalists Adam Ward and Alison Parker being gunned down. On that Twitter account, the user posted tweets that seemed to reference earlier events at the station:
As a professional working in media for the past 26 years, I’ve seen behavior like the kind Vester Flanagan exhibited on the job. It’s always unprofessional and always troubling personally. To get so angry that you have to escorted from a job by police tells me more than I need to know. That is a nail in the coffin of a career in the small world of broadcasting.
I have no doubt that we’ll learn a lot when his “manifesto” is finally made public. He’ll be your garden variety narcissist who thought that his talents were far greater than they were. Who was angry because everyone didn’t immediately acknowledge his every word and action as golden.
He screwed himself and took it out on other people.
There’s another aspect deserving attention: the ease with which one can acquire guns and ammunition. Virginia is not alone among states as having rolled over quite easily to the NRA and related groups. As a result, anyone can buy a gun, without a background check, without a psychological evaluation, without a training course. We won’t see less of this kind of maniacal behavior, we will see more. We will see more because the instruments used in most homicides in the United States are lethal, cheap, and easy to acquire. It should be harder to own a gun than it is to get a driver’s license, and that’s a reasonable expectation. After all, the purpose of driving is to get from one place to another. If there is a death as a result of driving, it’s just that— an accident. The purpose of a gun is to kill something. Not to protect, or threaten, or make safe, but to kill. Any other purported reason for easy access to guns simply enables whack jobs like this guy, the Aurora theatre shooter, and the Sandy Hook shooter. The NRA has emerged as the Chief Enabler of murder and mayhem in this country. This causes me to ask, just who elected them?
Yes, and race baiting is one of the techniques these useless assholes use. Color is not relevant, you have loser white guys who blame blacks because they can’t get a job, etc. In this case, all this guys problems are obviously due to white people… but like some do, he then took it to another level. Sick.
I agree with every word you said, Tomcruzian. Well-stated.
I predict the GOP presidential candidates and right wing media, bloggers and social media users will, as always,handle these disclosures in a mature, thoughtful manner as they comment upon them. Oh, yes. I am certain of it. So much so, that I do not even need to go find out. One might even say I will do all I can to avoid finding out what they say for as long as I possibly can.