Virginia News Show's First Emotional Moments Back On Air

Less than 24 hours after two Virginia journalists were killed in an on-air shooting, their station, WDBJ in Roanoke, opened its Thursday morning news broadcast with a somber tribute, followed by a moment of silence and many, many tears.

Reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were killed Wednesday by a former reporter at the station, Vester Lee Flanagan, who hours later killed himself.

• Full coverage: Suspect Dead After Killing 2 During Live Television Interview

Shortly after the start of Thursday’s newscast, precisely 24 hours after the two young lives were lost, anchor Kim McBroom grasped the hands of two colleagues sitting on either side of her.

“We are approaching a moment that none of us will ever forget,” McBroom said with a shaky voice.

Pictures of Parker and Ward were displayed on screen.

The show went silent.

Here are those moments from Thursday and what else you may want to know about Wednesday’s shooting.

Later they held a moment of silence at the 24-hour mark of the killing:

What else you need to know:

The shooter was a former station employee

WDBJ station manager Jeff Marks said on air that Flanagan worked at WDBJ during 2012 and 2013, using the on-air name Bryce Williams.

“Vester was an unhappy man. We employed him as a reporter and he had some talent in that respect and some experience,” Marks said, according to the Washington Post. “He quickly gathered a reputation of someone who was difficult to work with. He was sort of looking out for people to say things he could take offense to.

“Eventually, after many incidents of his anger, we dismissed him. He did not take that well. We had to call police to escort him from the building.”

Williams filed an action with the Equal Opportunity Employment Committee that employees had made racist comments to him. But the complaint was dismissed when, Marks said, “none of them could be corroborated by anyone. We think they were fabricated.”

At least one of his previous employers had a similar experience

Flanagan previously worked at KPIX in San Francisco, WTWC in Tallahassee, Florida, and WTOC Savannah, Georgia.

Don Shafer, now news director at San Diego, hired, and later fired the shooter in Tallahassee, when he went by the name of Vester Flanagan.

During an on-air interview this morning, Shafer said that Flanagan was good at his job “and then things started getting a little strange with him.”

Flanagan was let go because of “bizarre behavior and fighting with other employees. He threatened to punch people out and he was running fairly rough-shod over other folks.”

The morning anchor is taking time off

Both Parker and Ward were romantically involved with employees at the station, leading to touching tributes on social media.

“We didn’t share this publicly, but (Parker) and I were very much in love. We just moved in together. I am numb,” Chris Hurst, an anchor at the station, tweeted shortly after the killing.

He said later that he needed time away from the job but would return before too long because that is what Parker would have wanted.

“We were together almost nine months. It was the best nine months of our lives. We wanted to get married.We just celebrated her 24th birthday… She was the most radiant woman I ever met. And for some reason she loved me back. She loved her family, her parents and her brother.”

Ward was engaged to a producer at the television station.

Parker and Ward worked together often.

Flanagan posted the shooting on social media

Shortly after the shooting, Flanagan took to his social media pages — which were under his Bryce Williams pseudonym — and posted a first-person video of the shooting.

“I filmed the shooting see Facebook,” he wrote on the Twitter account, before posting the video on Twitter, too. He also referenced his alleged discrimination, saying, “Alison made racist comments” and “EEOC report filed.”

The video shows him approaching the live interview holding a pistol, then lowering it when the camera pans away from the liveshot. He waits until the camera is back on the reporter and opens fire.

Twitter quickly suspended his account, and Facebook followed shortly after.

Patch has decided not to link to or embed the video.

The gunman died at the hospital after a police chase

After the shooting, Flanagan fled, leading police on a chase across Virginia.

He refused to pull over for police and eventually crashed his car on Interstate 66 in Faquier County almost 200 miles away, according to state police.

When authorities approached the vehicle, Flanagan shot himself but didn’t die immediately. He was taken to an area hospital via airlift and treated for life-threatening injuries, police say.

He was pronounced dead at 1:26 p.m., according to Virginia’s secretary of public safety.

Image via WDBJ