suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. flanagan was flown from the scene to a nova fairfax hospital where he died at approximately 1:30 p.m. today. the virginia state police bureau of criminal investigation salem field office and our salem bureau field operations have been and will continue to assist the franklin county sheriff s office with this investigation into the shooting. sheriff? thank you very much, sergeant. i will try to entertain some questions that you may have at this point in time. we ll take a couple of questions. yes, sir. how did the suspect know where the victims were and was it being planned for some time? that is a question that we are looking into. did he know before this morning that they would be located at this remote location doing a broadcast? did he see it sir that morning, this morning, as many people were watching. we re looking into that matter
describes racial discomfort. he cites the charlton church shooting as a motivator and he says, like you said, that he was a powder keg. abc received this fax a couple hours after the shooting this morning and then received a phone call from him, at least someone who case this was bryce williams works called the newsroom and then hung up and at that point abc did hand the facts over to investigators but we know they are combing through it and have a copy of it and they may share more of it later today. i m told by a spokeswoman they are reviewing it and they have released some of the excerpts which show a very confused person. he committed these two heinous crimes early this morning, again, over live tv and gets into his rental car and drives up on 66, state trooper jonathan recognizes the license and flashes her lights on. he immediately sort of hab hazardly veers off the road and that s one of the crime scenes that we re now seeing. he apparently turned the gun on
gun on himself he was live tweeting, so he was on social media posting a graphic and extraordinarily disturbing video filmed from his perspective down the barrel of his gun. the entire shooting posted on both his twitter page and facebook. i have a number of voices here at top of the show. i had alexander field, one of our correspondents, evan perez, our justice correspondent, drew griffith our justice correspondent and jonathan gilliam, navy s.e.a.l. and casey jordan, cnn contributor, art roderick, former assistant director of u.s. marshall s office and philip holloway, legal analyst. drew griffith, let me pause and say we re going to talk about these two young lives lost and also the woman who was injured, vicky gardner, chamber of commerce executive director being interviewed live on tell vig at 6:45 when this all happened, so that said drew griffin, the floor is yours as far as your news you have now about this gunman. reporter: well, we know he was frustrated in looking for a
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