MONETA, Va. -- On the day he was fired from a Virginia TV station, Vester Flanagan pressed a wooden cross into his boss's hand as two police officers walked him to the door. "You'll need this," he said.
More than two years later, Flanagan -- fulfilling a threat to put his conflict with station managers into "the headlines" -- recorded video of himself gunning down two station employees during a live morning broadcast.
One day after the on-air killings of a reporter and a cameraman, the grieving staff at WDBJ-TV drew together Thursday for an emotional broadcast of its Mornin' show. At 6:45 a.m. -- the time of the shooting that took the lives of reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward -- the station observed a moment of silence, showing photos of the two on the screens.
"We come to you with heavy hearts. Two of our own were shot during a live shot yesterday morning," said Kimberly McBroom, who was anchoring the morning show when the shootings occurred.
On Wednesday, Flanagan killed Parker, 24, and Ward, 27, while the two conducted a live interview, and then went online to claim that they had wronged him in the past.
While the authorities were searching for Flanagan, he uploaded his video to Facebook and sent a manifesto to ABC News that said he had faced discrimination and sexual harassment because he was black and gay.
Social media accounts that used Flanagan's television name, Bryce Williams, were shut down within hours of the shooting.
After the killing, Flanagan texted a friend suggesting he had "done something stupid," investigators wrote in a search warrant. He turned the gun on himself when police caught up with him a few hours later. Inside his rental car, investigators found extra license plates, a wig, shawl, sunglasses and a hat as well as some stamped letters and a "to do" list.
The subject of the interview, Vicki Gardner, was wounded in the attack. Her husband, Tim Gardner, said in a telephone interview that his wife lost a kidney and part of her colon, but is in good spirits, as she's surrounded by family.
During a Thursday afternoon news conference, the station's general manager, Jeffrey Marks, recalled a series of problems with Flanagan while he worked at WDBJ from March 2012 to February 2013. He confronted an anchor over a story and attempted to reach the company's chief executive officer to complain. He filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as the lawsuit.
But there was no inkling then or since of what was to come, Marks said. Former co-workers said they'd seen Flanagan around Roanoke, but none had any conversations with him, let alone confrontations.
"We are still at a loss to figure out what happened to him in those 2½ years," Marks said.
Others who crossed paths with Flanagan during that time, though, recalled a man who took offense easily.
When Flanagan landed a job at a UnitedHealthcare call center in Roanoke after he was fired from WDBJ, he was usually boisterous and intense, notable for his loud laughter. So Michelle Kibodeaux, who worked with Flanagan, took note one day when he seemed quiet.
"I told him, 'You're being quiet today. The shoe's on the other foot.' He said, 'You don't know me well enough to judge me.'"
Kibodeaux said when she turned to walk away, Flanagan tried to grab her by the shoulder, but she ducked under his hand.
"He said, 'Don't you walk away from me. Don't you turn your back on me,'" she recalled.
Flanagan told her never to speak to him again and she steered clear of him.
A few months ago, Flanagan's temper was set off again by a visit to Jack Brown's Beer & Burger Joint in downtown Roanoke. Afterward, general manager Heather Fay said, she received a 15- to 20-page letter from Flanagan criticizing the staff for telling customers to "have a nice day" instead of "thank you."
"You could tell he was really angry," Fay said. "It was bizarre, for sure."
Fay, who said she threw the letter out shortly after receiving it, wrote down Flanagan's name and a general description of his letter in her manager's notebook. She said she didn't think much of it at the time other than that "the guy had a lot of time on his hands," Fay said.
A cousin, Guynell Smith, 69, who was stopping by Flanagan's father's home in Vallejo, Calif., told reporters that the family was unaware of any troubles.
"He was just a normal kid," she said. "We knew Vester a different way."
Meanwhile, the father of one of the victims used the shooting to make a series of emotional appeals for laws that would prevent mentally ill people from buying guns.
"I'm going to do something, whatever it takes, to get gun legislation, to shame people, to shame legislators into doing something about closing loopholes and background checks, and making sure crazy people don't get guns," Andy Parker, the father of Alison Parker, said Wednesday night on Fox News.
Thursday morning, on CNN, he said, "I'm for the Second Amendment, but there has to be a way to force politicians who are cowards in the pockets of the NRA to make sensible laws to make sure crazy people can't get guns."
Citing previous shootings by people with mental illnesses, he asked, "How many Alisons will it take?"
Appearing with Andy Parker on Fox, Chris Hurst, Alison Parker's boyfriend and a fellow reporter at WDBJ, emphasized that he had covered mental-health issues and did not want society to react to the tragedy by deciding to "discriminate against everybody else who has a mental illness."
"Clearly, something went wrong here between him leaving our station and being able to purchase a gun and commit a premeditated act," Hurst said. Even before the shooting Wednesday morning, he said, "there had been ample time beforehand where many, many other things went wrong. Those need to be addressed."
Ward's family members said they weren't ready to discuss the tragedy publicly.
On Thursday night, several hundred Roanoke-area residents held a candlelight vigil outside WDBJ's studios. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring attended the vigil.
Herring, who has advocated gun-control measures, said, "We need to quit thinking we can walk away from tragedies like this and that the problem is going to go away by itself."
Information for this article was contributed by Adam Geller, Alan Suderman, Matthew Barakat, Jonathan Drew, Alan Suderman, John Raby, Larry O'Dell, Holbrook Mohr, Terry Chea and Jennifer Farrar of The Associated Press and by Hawes Spencer, Richard Perez-Pena and Mark S. Getzfred of The New York Times.
A Section on 08/28/2015