that the gunman is dead after ultimately shooting himself during this police pursuit. we re also learning a lot more about the two young journalists, 24-year-old alison parker and 27-year-old adam ward. both starting their careers. adam was a photojournalist who attended virginia tech, 27. alison was just 24, gone to james madison, university, working at this tv station as a reporter. they were a team each and every morning, and so hours after the the shootings the general manager of the tv station came on air to express really what these two young people meant to the station, to the community and just absolute heartbreak in this newsroom. we re in shock. all there is in our building today is hugging and crying and consoling. many members of our staff were very close to alison and add am and everybody knew them.
this was the tipping point for this young man. go ahead, casey. yes. you have to understand that he has made allegations that alison parker has made racist comments which, of course, the people at the television station said they never even worked together. he was dismissed a year before she even came so he perceives perhaps the charleston shooting where, of course, a white gunman slayed the african-american let me jump in, forgive me. want to get to some crucial information about to be given to us by the local sheriff s office here in virginia. let s go. i just want to make sure that through this we continue to keep our prayers and thoughts with the family of alison parker and aar adam ward as well as the wdbj channel 7 news family.
county sheriff s office received a 911 call concerning shots fired at bridgewater plaza near smith mountain lake. a wdbj-tv news crew was conducting a live interview at the plaza with miss gardner when vester lee flanagan ii, age 41, of roanoke suddenly appeared and approached him and started shooting. alison parker age 24 and add am ward age 27 died at the scene. both parker and ward were residents of roanoke, virginia. let us not forget that they grew up in this area. they were part of our community. we don t want to forget that. miss gardner was transported to
why. this is still so early to even begin to unpack that, but i have several on set as we begin to see pieces of this puzzle. let me begin with you, alex, with these tweets from this man after murdering these two young people doing what they loved. he takes to twitter. yeah, this is the trail that police have to follow and there s a whole lot of documents for police to look through because when you talk about three people being gunned down defenseless, it s completely senseless and not linear and there s these to grassch at. we know he was surrounded by police, before he shot himself and died in the hospital this afternoon he posted these statements on twitter and alison, referring to the young woman, alison made racist comments and then he also goes on to say adam went to hr on me after working with me one time and then he says i filmed the shooting. see facebook. so what we ve done is taken a look back at who this man is,
vester flanagan. he has been described to police as a disgruntled former employee. that may be as close to a motive as one might get but there s also evidence that he may have felt that he was retaliating for racism. those were the words that he indicated in a 23-page manifesto that he faxed to abc news at some point this morning. we know that this was a man who was dismissed from this station two years ago and know back in 2000 he was fired from another station and followed up with a lawsuit alleging racism and that case settled. abc news received this fax, handed over to investigators and we re combing through it and do have notes as far as motivation and that he was a self-professed powder keg waiting to go boom, his words. it does have some of the hallmarks of a hate crime and i ll leaves it to others but he