'Disturbed' Va. gunman angered by Charleston shootings

Show Caption Hide Caption Former reporter filmed on air killing of TV journalists Police say the suspect in the shooting of a reporter and photographer that happened on live tv is a former reporter at the station, WDBJ. Vester Lee Flanagan, a.k.a. Bryce Williams, allegedly shot himself after fleeing the scene.

Vester Flanagan, the former TV newsman accused of killing two fellow journalists in Virginia, had a history of anger over race issues in the workplace, was once fired for threatening colleagues and even described himself in a lengthy letter after the shootings as as a "human powder keg" waiting to explode.

In a long missive to ABC News, a man claiming to be Bryce Williams, Flanagan's on-air name, said he decided to go on Wednesday's shooting spree following the killings in June of nine black worshipers by a white gunman in Charleston, S.C.

Flanagan said he bought a gun two days after the Charleston church rampage.

He called the church shooting a "tipping point ... but my anger has been building steadily ... I’ve been a human powder keg for a while ... just waiting to go BOOM!!!!”

“Yes, it will sound like I am angry ... I am," he wrote. "And I have every right to be. But when I leave this Earth, the only emotion I want to feel is peace ...”

In the rambling message, delivered by fax to ABC News two hours after the killings, Flanagan also said he had suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work, particularly for being a gay black man.

He also praised the mass killings of 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 and 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

Flanagan, 41, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds about seven hours after the killings near Roanoke, Va.

Sheriff Bill Overton of Franklin County said the motive for Wednesday's killing was not clear but described Flanagan as a "disturbed" individual whose life appeared to be "spiraling out of control."

From his writings on Twitter, Flanagan, a onetime child model, had been seething for years over what he said was racial discrimination at newsrooms where he had worked. He had been fired from two TV stations, including WDBJ, the Roanoke TV station where the two slain journalists worked.

Flanagan, who used the on-air name "Bryce Williams," went on his Twitter account within hours of the shooting to accuse one of his victims, WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, of making "racist comments," and asked rhetorically: "They hired her after that???"

He charged that the other victim, cameraman Adam Ward, had filed a complaint with the station's human resources office "after working with me one time!!!"

“Vester was an unhappy man," WDBJ station manager Jeff Marks told CNN. "We employed him as a reporter and he had some talent in that respect and some experience. He quickly gathered a reputation of someone who was difficult to work with. He was sort of looking out to 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.”

Marks said he believed Flanagan had fabricated incidents of racial discrimination during his time at the station.

“You can tell he was obviously very, very angry at the termination," WDBJ news director Kelly Zuber tells USA TODAY. "We understand he continued to live in Roanoke. But why today? Why them? We just don’t know. There was no warning of this. We had no contact with him at all, and then suddenly this happened.”

Kimberly McBroom, the morning anchor at WDBJ7, worked closely with Parker and Ward. She told USA TODAY that Flanagan had “made threats” after being fired, and staff were told to call the police if they saw him at the building.

“My interaction with him was superficial, and I wanted it that way,” said McBroom, who worked a different shift from Flanagan.

“He wasn’t someone I felt comfortable around. I’d hear about incidents he was involved in – he’d lose his temper or make coworkers feel uncomfortable or do something inappropriate,” she said. “He had a hair-trigger.”

But no one at the station could imagine he carried a grudge two years after being fired.

“We may never know what motivated him,” McBroom said

According to his LinkedIn profile, Flanagan had not worked in journalism since leaving WDBJ in February 2013. The profile's space for work history from 2013 was filled with a smiley face emoticon.

In his now-suspended Twitter account, Flanagan posted extensive pictures and videos of himself as a child model in magazine ads and in runway fashion shows in 1988. He also said he had been the homecoming prince at his high school.

Flanagan also expressed his charges of racial discrimination in the workplace.

An Oakland native and graduate of San Francisco State University, Flanagan had worked at a number of stations in California, Texas and Georgia before landing a position in Tallahassee in 1999. What first appeared to be a dream job in Florida did not work out.

Don Shafer, current news director at San Diego 6, told USA TODAY that Flanagan was a talented reporter and that he hired him at Tallahassee's WTWC in 1999 as evening and weekend anchor. But Shafer also fired him after 11 months for “conduct unbecoming,” including "bizarre behavior" and threatening employees.

After he was terminated, Flanagan sued the station for racial discrimination, but the lawsuit was dismissed in court, Shafer said.

On Twitter last month, Flanagan posted a snippet from a Florida newspaper article about the incident. It quotes him as saying that he had been "very excited" to take up the job, but had been "shocked and disappointed" over what he said was the "level of racism" at the station.

Another newspaper report from the time period quotes Flanagan as charging that he and another black employee were referred to as "monkeys" and that a supervisor once told him that "blacks are lazy and do not take advantage of free money" for scholarships and economic opportunities, the Tallahasee Democrat, reports.

Flanagan also alleged that a white supervisor, working on a story about a black homicide suspect who had "gold and green teeth," referred to the suspect as "just another thug." The same supervisor also speculated that the man had "collard greens" in his teeth.

The TV station's general manager at the time, Maria Moore, was quoted as saying Flanagan's contract was not renewed because of "corporate belt-tightening." The local NBC affiliate, stopped broadcasting newscasts in 2000, the Democrat notes.

Contributing: Liz Szabo, USA TODAY