on twitter. my heart goes out to the two journalists who were shot in virginia this morning. my show airs on wdbj 7 every day. sending love to you all. also gabrielle giffords tweeted this. horrified to hear that two young journalists were shot and killed doing the job they loved. praying for the wdbj family. the #guncontrol is also starting to trend here, sparked by this act. and also just in the last ten, 15 minutes, jeb bush just tweeted, quote, shocked by the horrific murders in roanoke. we are praying for alison, adam and all those affected. also, thomas, one of the most outstanding moments from the coverage this morning from wdbj came when the general manager spoke, of course saying frank low that he s stepping out of his role as a journalist and he said frank low i don t know if i want him to live or die, referencing the suspect. but also speaking about that suspect during their coverage
again, that s when these local tv station reporters were doing a live shot and they were fired upon, allegedly by vester flanagan. again, a dismissed former employee from the same station, worked with these two. we ve seen images on social media of them together. pete, do you know more, though, about the timeline? and again, just to inform our viewers, 2:00 p.m. we re waiting for franklin county sheriff s office to give us an update. but do you know more about the timeline of when police were able to get a lead on flanagan? and how that corresponds with those social media postings that he was able to upload via twitter and facebook? reporter: getting a lead on him happened very quickly after the shooting because there is a freeze frame, a still frame that police were able to take from the actual camera that the cameraman was holdings. this is it. several frames of video apparently show the suspect
toward the live shot, where his two former colleagues were interviewing vicki gardner. she is a member of the local chamber of commerce. that video then ends. in the second video, it picks up with him being on top of the trifecta, the way that the interview was taking place, of the reporter on the far left, vicki gardner in the middle, the cameraman facing both of them, not being able to see flanagan behind him. then you see from the perspective of the actual video a gun raise up into the frame and then he begins to fire. these are images that were uploaded, again, via facebook and twitter. those social media accounts were quickly taken down. they are absolutely jarring. he takes first aim at alison parker, just 24 years old, fires several shots at her. then turns the gun on 27-year-old adam ward. one of his last acts as his camera drops to the ground is actually capturing an image of flanagan. as you can see right there, this is the camera tilted on its
pages, 23 pages, he sends it to the television station. he films it because all he s trying to do, thomas, is two things. number one, say look at me, i m a victim. and number two, say look at me, i m justified in killing these people. and then of course he shoots himself to prevent the world, law enforcement, criminal justice and the media from holding this guy up to the light of day and saying, excuse me, your allegations appear to be false. you re simply a coward and a killer. meanwhile, we are unsure whether or not he will survive the sustained injuries, self-inflicted, according to the ve virginia state police. he is currently getting treatment at a d.c. based hospital. when we look at how all of this correspondences to the timeline. i was able to look at his twitter feed and it was roughly 11:15 that his reporter twitter feed under the name bryce williams, that s when it first started to appear fresh tweets.
i don t know what happened. that was virgil barker, a man who grew up with vester flanagan, knew him as a young boy. flanagan growing up to be a television reporter working in different local markets around this country. one of his last positions was working as a reporter in roanoke, virginia, at wdbj tv. that s where this morning he walked up on two of his former colleagues and we know now that they are dead after he allegedly opened fire on them and also recorded the whole thing from a first-person perspective. used social media, twitter and facebook, to upload the video and images along with corresponding tweets trying to justify why he did this and also telling everybody, quote, i filmed the shooting, see facebook. there are two different video images that then appear on this twitter feed. the first is 20 seconds long. we are not going to be showing you any of these videos, but i ll describe to you what i witnessed. in the first video, it s 20 seconds and you saw him walking up d