Suspect in Virginia TV slayings grew up in Oakland

Oakland native Vester Lee Flanagan II started his career in television news in the Bay Area after graduating from San Francisco State University, but on Wednesday he became the news when he gunned down a reporter and cameraman in Virginia live on the air, authorities said.

Between the time he allegedly committed the slayings and when he took his own life, Flanagan posted a video of the killings that he took himself, and he is believed to be the author of a manifesto boasting that the bloodbath was a racially motivated retaliation for the Charleston, S.C., church massacre in June.

Flanagan, 41, committed the killings near Roanoke while thousands of viewers were watching station WDBJ’s news at 6:45 a.m. EDT, authorities said. He had worked as a reporter at several stations around the country under the on-air name Bryce Williams. But Flanagan never lasted more than a couple of years at any job and had a history of conflicts with employers.

Flanagan was fired from the Roanoke TV station in 2013 and apparently knew the two victims in Wednesday’s shootings, reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27. He also shot and wounded a woman whom Parker was interviewing.

“They were the bright shiny young faces that we got to see in the morning,” WDBJ News Director Kelly Zuber said of Parker and Ward. “These were two beautiful, incredible people just cut down at the beginning of their lives.”

‘Never seen him angry’

At Flanagan’s childhood home on the 4000 block of 39th Avenue in Oakland, a neighbor and close friend said he was “in shock” after learning of the killings.

“I’ve never seen him angry in my life,” said 54-year-old Dwayne Virgil Barker. “I’ve never seen him curse. I’m still in shock. He’s not a monster.”

Flanagan — a graduate of Skyline High School in Oakland — began his television career in the Bay Area at KPIX-TV in the 1990s, starting as an intern after studying broadcast journalism at San Francisco State. Later, he worked for a year at Pacific Gas and Electric Co. before taking a TV news job in Greenville, N.C.

While a motive for the killing was still being investigated, ABC News officials said they had received a 23-page fax after the slayings from someone named Bryce Williams, who said he had committed the killings in retaliation for the June 17 massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in which a white man is suspected of gunning down nine African Americans.

Content of fax

“Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15,” reads the fax, which ABC made public and turned over to investigators.

“What sent me over the top was the church shooting. And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them,” the writer said.

The fax referred to accused Charleston gunman Dylann Roof’s statement that he went on the church rampage in hopes of starting a race war.

“You want a race war (deleted)? BRING IT THEN YOU WHITE ... (deleted),” the fax reads as ABC released it.

The sender of the fax said Jehovah spoke to him and told him to kill Parker and Ward. The writer also praised the gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University in 2007.

During an afternoon news conference, Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton said Flanagan shot himself while on the run from a Virginia State Police trooper.

Shot himself

Flanagan was found in critical condition with a self-inflicted gunshot wound after careening off Interstate 66 and crashing into a median hours after the killings, authorities said. He died at a hospital.

Parker had been interviewing Vicki Gardner, a Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman, outside Roanoke about local tourism when eight shots rang out. Parker was hit first, screamed and ran, shouting, “Oh my God” as the killer turned his gun on Ward. The camera captured a fleeting image, including the face, of the assailant holding a handgun.

Gardner was in stable condition after undergoing surgery, officials said.

After the attack, the station quickly switched to the anchor, her eyes wide and jaw dropping as she said, “OK, not sure what happened there.”

Following the shootings, Flanagan allegedly posted a message on Twitter that read, “I filmed the shooting see Facebook.” A video on his Facebook page showed a handgun pointed at the reporter and cameraman as they were doing the live interview. Parker, Ward and Gardner apparently didn’t notice the gunman until the shooting started.

Flanagan appeared to tweet disparaging remarks about Parker and Ward. “Adam went to hr on me after working with me one time!!!” Flanagan tweeted. He also tweeted, Parker had “made racist comments,” but didn’t say if they were aimed at him.

WDBJ station manager Jeff Marks said Flanagan was “an unhappy man.”

“When he was hired here, he quickly gathered a reputation as someone who was difficult to work with,” Marks said. “He was sort of looking out for people to say things that he could take offense to.”

San Francisco State spokeswoman Adrianne Bee said Flanagan graduated from the university in 1995 with a degree in radio and TV. Oakland Unified School District spokesman Troy Flint said Flanagan attended Redwood Heights Elementary School, Montera Middle School and graduated from Skyline High School in 1991.

“This man had a connection to Oakland. But we see these types of incidents across the country and we have to do better as a nation,” Flint said.

Started career in S.F.

Flanagan started as a news intern for KPIX-TV in San Francisco in 1993, and was later given a paid staff position as a production assistant and weekend news writer.

“When Vester worked for KPIX, he was just a young, eager kid out of journalism school and like so many other interns and new employees who came through there in my 30 years at KPIX, he just wanted to be on TV and to do a good job,” said retired station anchor Barbara Rodgers. “Well, now he is on TV, but in the worst possible way. My condolences to all of the families who are affected by this tragedy.”

After leaving KPIX in 1996, Flanagan bounced around a series of small markets in the South. He lived in San Francisco and worked as a customer service representative at PG&E from 2001 to 2002 before he made another go at TV news.

Bias suit

In 2000, Flanagan filed a $15,000 federal lawsuit against WTWC-TV, an NBC affiliate in Tallahassee, Fla., charging racial discrimination and retaliation. He claimed a producer called him a “monkey” in 1999, the year he was hired as a newscaster and anchor there. The suit was settled in 2001.

Guynell Smith, an older cousin of Flanagan who lives in Vallejo, initially didn’t pay much attention to the news about the shooting until her brother called and told her to take a closer look at her television.

“I said, ‘That’s Vester. Oh my God!’” Smith explained, adding that no one in her family, including Flanagan’s father, was aware of any personal problems he was experiencing. “I don’t know what could have happened to have brought this on,” Smith said. “I just know him as a good, decent, polite person.”