be a press conference at 1:00 p.m. it seems like we would get something sooner than that, jim, given that they have a location. let me have you hold on for a second, pat. right now we ve been able to confirm the identity of the suspect. he is vester lee flanagan ii. he s 41 years old. this is the information we re just getting in right now. the virginia state police are pursuing leads and not engage in an actual pursuit on the interstate. that contradicts what the governor said in his interview a short time ago on the radio. so the pursuing lead not engaged in an actual pursuit on the interstate. it says franklin county virginia sheriff s office is investigating the shooting that happened this morning at
survived at first. cops have now told us he later died at the hospital, and they say before he died, he faxed this sort of manifesto to abc s network news here in new york. as for the killer s claim that his former colleagues were racist, the station boss says the gunman was full of it. he says the shooter would make up lies about coworkers and enjoyed picking fights. that eventually got him fired. vester was an unhappy man. he quickly became gathered a reputation of someone who was difficult to work with. eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. and he did not take that well. we had to call the police to escort him from the building. there s much more on his background and his behavior, and we ll get to that. but friends and coworkers are honoring the two victims today. journalists who died doing their
after the murders live on television and surreal twist of flanagan using his on air name bryce williams was sending out these tweets and facebook posts as he fled north from roanoke. among the social media posts was the video that we re not showing of the shooting from his perspective, and apparently those social media posts helped law enforcement figure out exactly where he was. they were tracking his cell phone. the virginia state police say that this is how the pursuit ended around 11:30 this morning. state troopers saw his gray car headed eastbound on interstate 66, far north of the roanoke region, heading towards the washington, d.c. area. troopers turned on their emergency lights to pull him over, but he fled. minutes later the vehicle ran off the road and crashed and when troopers found him they found that he had shot himself. he s now being treated for life-threatening wounds, brooke, and we re watching that closely right now. evan perez, thank you. i want to ask everyone to
side. but you can see flanagan s face on the top right-hand of your screen and the outstretched gun. vicki gardner is the other person who was shot and injured. she was rushed to the hospital. she was in surgery. it is now believed that she will recover, listed in stable condition. we don t know how many times she was fired upon, but we do know that there were definite low a series of 10 to 12 shots that rang out in these two videos that were posted. anthony roman is a security expert and he joins me here on set. anthony, we have the general manager talking, jeffrey marks, to his employees about what it was like to work with vester flanagan, aka bryce williams, that was his reporter name. they had a difficult time. he was let go two years ago. this is not somebody that was really on their radar. then we hear from that neighbor of his, virgil barker, who said he was demure, nice guy.
affected by this senseless tragedy. a lot of people resent the media. don t like the media. i understand that some of that is self-inflicted but media is also local reporters, local journalists like these who go out on the streets every day, sometimes without realizing put themselves in harm s way. it is a stark reminder that this can be a dangerous business, even if you re not anywhere near a war zone or a riot. jenna: howie, if you would stand by a moment. we re getting some news as well. as we mentioned to our viewers from the associated press we identified the name, at least of the shooter at this time. i will go ahead to pull that up because i make sure i m having the exact name. vester lee flanagan. at the same time there is an interesting and new development to this story. we believe this suspect at this time, under a different name, using social media, using twitter, has posted video of the shooting taking place. we know this because we have been able to view this video,