abc, flanagan talks about putting a deposit down on a gun within 48 hours of the mother emanuel nine shooting and goes on in a certain way to praise the person who shot you at virginia tech. that s disturbing. i had not heard that before this and clearly we need to know more information about what happened but the idea of, say, doing a background check before somebody buys a gun was a good idea yesterday. that same idea before buying a gun is going to be a good idea again tomorrow. no matter what happens. and, you know, unfortunately, in virginia we can t get the background check bills out of a committee. not a single vote in the house. the people of the common wemt of virginia need to know the hold-up. why we don t have the laws we want and support and largely
live shot for their early morning show. and that s when flanagan walked up on them, actually shot video of what he was doing from a first-person perspective, and opened fire on his former colleagues. 24-year-old alison parker and the videographer, 27-year-old adam ward. my colleague, frances rivera, is following the reaction we ve been witnessing on social media and how pervasive this has been, frances, because that s how flanagan that s what flanagan used to get his message out, especially that chilling video. the live tweeting, we did hear from hundreds and thousands of people on social media reacting to this shooting. right now 5400 tweets per hour on #virginia and #virginiashooting of the all those hash tags and others, many have been sharing their condolenc condolences. senator tim kaine tweeted this about the tragedy in his home state saying heartbroken by the
working together and let him go. jonathan, you re still with me. have you heard anything about whether or not he was on the station s radar? he didn t get another job. he didn t move out of the market. so this is somebody who could have built up a lot of resentment as he watched former colleagues and their success on local tv, especially after the fact that he tried to unsuccessfully file eeoc complaints against two individuals. we want to hear more from the station, the general manager s given a very thorough explainer leading up to the dismissal of the flanagan and a lot of the problems that existed with him leading up to it. we have not heard that much in terms of what he was doing after that. you talk about the chance they took. he had left the news business. he worked as a reporter in several markets and then left and took a job in markets and then as you say this station took a chance on him bringing
and she s watching literally live on any number of screens as her fiancee is gunned down. these are two people who are so well known in this community, so well loved and embraced by this station. they should not have been in the line of fire. there was no reason to think that when these two journalists set out to do their job today that they were in harm s way. alison s boyfriend, one of the tweets, i am numb. obviously the question is trying to figure out why would somebody do something like this. evan perez is standing by with some information as far as this man who then jumped in a car after committing heinous crimes plural and hit the highway. what happened next. that s right, brooke. we expect that we ll get an update from the local sheriff there in just a little while but here s what the virginia state police say happened. we know that local state and federal law enforcement were swarming the virginia region looking for vester flanagan
characterization as a disgruntled former employee. but this is someone who understands both social media, television, et appears he had equivalent of a gopro camera that he was wearing or had at the time. you and i have probably seen videos this morning of him walking up to the three victims. he has the gun extended in his hand. he kind of waves the gun back and forth. tamron, it s almost like the power of life and death, which, of course, he had this morning, as he decides who he s going to shoot first. but it s also the value of that video to him to take his time to set the shot both from the video as well as the handgun shot and then go ahead and commit this act. i m sorry to interrupt you but right now there are reports that the alleged shooter, vester flanagan, has shot himself.