50N, I instructed my mother several years ago to intercept the mail before my dad sees it. I grew tired of the solicitations for money for some critical county commisiSioners race two time zones away upon which All Gun Rights seemed to hinge. 8-| And he’d send them money! I also remember reading those magazines when I was living at home. Things have changed. It’s sad. And sadder that all these elderly people are being taken advantage of.
Sorry@mainelonghorn - it is so sad when someone is so troubled or in so much pain and has a moment of a decision like that. Peace for your family and sending hugs.
@hunt:
Thank you, I was going to say much the same. It is much like the horror people felt after the Holocaust, and looked at the German people and said “well, of course, that could never happen here”, as if there was something uniquely bad and evil about the Germans. When Stanley Milgram did his famous obedience to authority studies, part of the backlash was that it showed that there was no way to tell, that ‘normal’ people often went to the highest levels of cruelty. So of course if X shot Y, X must be a devil, he isn’t like us, etc. The minister of the church I belonged to once talked about the use of the word evil, and he said it was a word that should be used sparingly, because when we start calling others evil, it becomes a lot easier for us to forget that we can commit evil acts, or worse, in the name of ‘wiping out evil’, willing to commit acts in the name of that that in of themselves may not be so great (example, you declare a dictator or country ‘evil’, you go to war to wipe out that ‘evil’, and the consequences of that leave a trail of death and misery and ongoing conflict that kills even more, the intent might have been good, but the obsession with removing evil might have led to even worse.
I don’t think this guy was mentally ill per se, I think he was someone who was an angry, hateful person, who allowed that hate to blind him, but I don’t think he was mentally ill, he felt wronged and decided to extract justice of his own choosing. I don’t know if the gun he had was legal or not, I would question if he got it legally after he had had the incidents at work, about what kind of things should be a red flag to getting a gun legally, but that is another discussion.
“red flag” There were red flags everywhere with most of these killers. But a red flag is not going to keep you from purchasing a gun these days . I truly don’t know what the answer is.
We don’t have the means to do much with “red flags,” sadly, in cases like these. The news station knew he was unstable, the employees did as well, but there’s never anything anyone could do about it.
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Vester Lee Flanagan, the crazed gunman who executed on live morning TV two local journalists who worked at his former station, was told before being fired by the station to seek help for possible mental health issues -- then lingered in Roanoke, Va., for more than two years, living in a squalor amid publicity photos of himself, porn and sex toys.
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Vester Lee Flanagan, 41, who went by the professional name Bryce Williams, was ordered by his bosses at local TV station WDBJ to seek help for his frequent problems with coworkers, according to a July 30, 2012 company memo obtained by The Guardian.
“You are required to contact Health Advocate, the employee assistance program,” the memo, from then-station director Dan Dennison, said. Williams was given four days to make the call. “This is a mandatory referral requiring your compliance. Failure to comply will result in termination of employment.”
… Someone who lived in Flanigan’s apartment complex told the Mirror that Flanagan was “rude and arrogant to everyone and anyone” and would sometimes throw cat feces at the dwellings of neighbors he was in disputes with.
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Did his manifesto say something that indicated that he also killed his cats???
The strange thing is the time. It’s not like he lost his job last month. He’s been harboring (and growing) this anger for two years. Most people get upset and then move on with their lives.
Plus, he was so methodical. I think he was so intent on causing harm that even if he couldn’t have gotten his hands on a gun, he would have used or found some other method…ran them down with his car, some sort of home-made bomb, etc. He had a goal and he was going to make sure it happened.
He had difficulty long before this and bounced around lots of stations and made allegations about mistreatment before. He seems to be originally from California but ended up in stations primarily in the southeast.
Scholarships have been/ are being set up in honor of Alison (JMU) and Adam (Virginia Tech). I am in Virginia and know lots of kids from these schools (including one of my own that went to Virginia Tech). We have been on the campuses of both JMU and Virginia Tech many times. It is so sad . I will be contributing to both scholarship funds for these young people. I cannot even imagine what their families are going through.
It is also being reported that he was gay, which brings a whole different set of issues. I say that because he was Black. Unfortunately, the Black community, in general, can be very homophobic. He probably had issues stemming from that as well.
Hold on a minute partyof5. Don’t automatically set the source of his problems on Black folks. Clearly Flanagan’s self important personality had a lot to do with his problems. Sounds like he may have used his sexuality as a sword (and a shield, as lawyers say) when having problems with co-workers. One report I read said that in some sort of legal matter, he demanded a jury of his peers-- which he described as Black women! Also, he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is known far and wide as a haven for gay people. We really don’t know what made this fellow a sociopath. It’s similar to the gay man who claimed to be Sidney Portier’s son, while defrauding and burglarizing his dupes. His sexuality had nothing to do with his crimes. Like Flanagan, he was a severe narcissist.
It seems as though he blamed his difficulties in getting along with his co-workers on anything but himself. That is, he said his co-workers were racists or anti-gay. He claimed that his multiple firings were due to racism rather than his poor performance. He never was honest with himself that he had anger issues and was a poor news reporter. He had convenient excuses.
People on YouTube are asking how neither the reporter nor the woman being interviewed saw him motioning with the gun – he easily was in the reporter’s periphery and the interviewee was facing him. It’s almost like he was taunting them… but they somehow did not notice him.
And then we see him fire the first two shots at the reporter. She screams, turns and begins to flee. We do not know which subsequent shots hit whom, but we know the first two were aimed at the reporter, because those were on his camera. Either he’s a really bad aim and missed her, or she had adequate adrenaline to turn and run despite having been wounded.
Awful stuff. Agreeing with what others have said: most of us are able to let go of grudges. He could not or would not. That stubbornness plus the delusions of persecution really turned him into a mess.
I heard it reported that he fired eight shots total. It hasn’t been reported how many shots each victim took.
@LakeWashington First off Im not setting all of his problems on Black folks, he clearly had anger issues. Furthermore, as a Black person. it is true that our community can be very homophobic.
As we are ALL opining on the source of his anger, I posit that him being a Black gay man probably contributed to some of his anger issues. According to him, in his suicide note, he said he was discriminated for being a gay Black. I am guessing he may have caught heck from his community growing up as well.
Other reporters have noted that is not unusual to not see things in your periphery when you are doing a live report. You are very focused on the interview.
This guy is getting exactly what he wanted. We’re all talking about him .
To bring it back around to the two young people he murdered in cold blood -here are their obituaries:
http://www.rader-funeralhome.com/obituaries/Adam-Ward-2/#!/obituary
http://m.wcti12.com/news/alison-parkers-obituary-released-funeral-scheduled/34970002
I’m not sure that’s it was because he was black or gay. I think he just was mentally ill.
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This guy is getting exactly what he wanted. We’re all talking about him .
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Right, but I don’t think people are talking the way he would have wanted. I think that in his crazy mind, he thought that people would be saying things like, “Well, we should have listened to him. We should have believed his accusations. We should have been on his side. He was right and we were wrong. He showed us the error of our ways,” and so forth.
Sure, people are talking about how crazy he is…here is something that came to light:
Just another person who goes out of their way to find offense in just about anything - not helped at all by how the media reports things … Eric Holder was right, “It remains not only valid – but essential – to question how such a strong alternative version of events [hands up, don’t shoot] was able to take hold so swiftly, and be accepted so readily.”
“Right, but I don’t think people are talking the way he would have wanted.” Maybe not, but who knows, all the negativity of what people are saying may have just played into his feelings of persecution. He had some sort of getaway plan and probably planned to follow all the media attention on him closely. He had to go to Plan B and kill himself when they closed in on him.
He may have planned to kill himself all along but not as quickly as it happened. He didn’t really get to enjoy any of the media attention… They are reporting on CNN that he operated gay porn sites.
the shooter seems pretty racist…
" the shooter seems pretty racist." He seemed primarily paranoid and narcissistic. His family seems pretty upset to know that he was capable of doing this. One of his coworkers for a time, who was also black (Larell I believe) said the killer tried to get him on his side, saying things like we need to stick together. But Larell said he never saw any evidence of racism when he was at the station. He got tearful about Alison and Adam when he was interviewed about this. The shooter was disturbed and probably isolated in the last 2 + years after his last firing in Roanoke (after getting booted previously from other stations, this may have been his last chance in the business).
His apartment was sparse, with a computer ( which was linked to operating gay porn sites- doesn’t matter if he was looking at gay or straight porn sites , more interesting to me that he was “operating sites” and obviously spending a lot of time on it) and numerous pictures in his apartment of him in his glory days as a male model. A narcissist. When I saw the pictures inside his apartment, I was floored. Very barren, with a computer that he probably used for porn and maybe keeping track of people , and tons of pictures of himself on his refrigerator. Lots of time on his hands to fume about his perceived mistreatment for over 2 years.
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He seemed primarily paranoid and narcissistic.
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I agree. And, getting fired and then harboring that anger for 2 years…