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Spotlight: Live TV show carnage again highlights U.S. racial woes

Xinhua, August 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

The motive of the suspect in the shooting of two Virginia journalists during a live television interview Wednesday once again highlighted the ongoing racial tension in the United States.

The suspected shooter, Vester Flanagan, aged 41, shot himself as police pursued him on a Virginia highway hours after the shooting. He died later in the hospital.

Flanagan, an African-American, was a former employee of Virginia-based WDBJ7 television station, which had identified its two slain journalists as 27-year-old photographer Adam Ward and 24-year-old TV reporter Alison Parker. Police said that both journalists were whites.

According to WDBJ7, the shooting happened during a live broadcast around 6:45 a.m. local time (1045 GMT) at a shopping mall in Moneta, Virginia, when its two journalists were covering a story at a recreation site called Bridgewater Plaza.

Authorities said they did not know whether the shooting was racially motivated, but Flanagan once claimed explicit racial discrimination in two U.S. TV stations, including WDBJ7.

According to legal documents, Flanagan said in a federal lawsuit against Florida-based WTWC-TV in 2000 that he was called a "monkey" by a producer in 1999.

He also said that an unnamed white supervisor at the station called black people "lazy."

Flanagan later worked for WDBJ7 in Virginia for a while under the name Bryce Williams, said Jeffrey Marks, general manager of the TV station.

Marks said that Flanagan once alleged that other employees made racially-tinged comments to him and filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The claim was found groundless and dismissed later.

Describing Flanagan as "an unhappy man" who was difficult to work with, Marks said his TV station dismissed him about two years ago, adding that at that time police had to escort Flanagan from the building.

Social media showed that the suspect had grievances against WDBJ7. Meanwhile, Flanagan reportedly sent ABC News a 23-page fax some two hours after the shooting, saying his attack was triggered by the June 17 mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine people were killed, and a white man has been charged.

ABC News cited Flanagan as saying he had suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work, and he has "been a human powder keg ...just waiting to go boom!"

In the fax to ABC News, Flanagan also praised the shooters who had carried out mass killings at Virginia Tech University in 2007 and at Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999.

The Associated Press (AP) reported that "the killer wanted not just to avenge perceived wrongs, but to gain maximum, viral exposure" via a live show killing. Endi