On Wednesday morning, a reporter and cameraman from WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Va., broadcasted a live interview for WDBJ’s morning news.

And then this happened, as reported on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America:

The reporter conducting the interview was Alison Parker. She was 24. The cameraman photographing the interview was Adam Ward. He was 27.

The interviewee was Vicki Gardner, of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce. She was shot in the back, but was in stable condition after surgery.

The shooter was Vester Flanagan, a former reporter for WDBJ-TV, who shot himself to death after a police chase later Wednesday. According to the Roanoke Times, Flanagan worked at the station about nine months, then was dismissed in February 2013. One year later, Flanagan sued WDBJ alleging racial discrimination, but the case was dismissed by a judge two months after it was filed.

Flanagan apparently shot video of the shooting, walking up to the video location with a pistol and small camera. He then posted his own video. This therefore was not any kind of random act in which the victims were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that, as law enforcement will tell you, most violent crimes are not random but are cases where the victim knows the assailant, may comfort some, though it won’t comfort Parker’s and Ward’s families.

The New York Post reports other things about Flanagan:

The suspect in a deadly on-air shooting of a reporter and a cameraman in Virginia is a disgruntled former colleague who posted videos of the murders to Twitter and accused the pair of racism.

Vester Lee Flanagan, a former on-air reporter who worked under the name Bryce Williams, killed Alison Parker and Adam Ward from Roanoke affiliate WDBJ.

The 41-year-old worked with the station for about a year before being fired in 2013 after becoming increasingly “difficult” to deal with, the station’s manager, Jefferey Marks, said Wednesday during a live TV segment.

In a Twitter rant just hours after the killings, Williams complained about the way Parker, 24, and Ward, 27, treated him because he was black.

“Alison made racist comments,” he tweeted at 10:09 a.m.

“EEOC report filed,” he said. “They hired her after that???”

“Adam went to hr on me after working with me one time!!!”

In two videos posted to Williams’ Facebook and Twitter pages, which have since been deleted, he can be seen opening fire on Ward and Parker as they report live from the Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Va.

At one point, Williams’ pistol appears to be no more than 6 inches from Parker’s face as she unknowingly continues her interview.

In a video posted to Facebook on Aug. 20, the on-air reporter can be seen doing a local story about guns. In one shot, he can even be seen holding what appears to be a machine pistol.

ABC News received a fax from someone purporting to be Williams, which they turned over to authorities.

In addition to working in Virginia from March 2012 to February 2013, Williams worked as a multimedia journalist and general assignment reporter at a number of stations throughout the South, including WNCT in Greenville, NC, WTWC in Tallahassee and WTOC in Savannah, according to WDBJ.

Heather Myers, a weekday morning anchor who worked with Williams in Florida, tweeted Wednesday that their news director at the time fired him in 2000 for “bizarre behavior and threatening employees.”

Federal court records show that he then sued WTWC for “discrimination and retaliation,” but the case was settled, according to the website Heavy.

Williams is originally from California and graduated from San Francisco State University, according to his LinkedIn page.

Speaking on-air Wednesday, his former station manager at WDBJ described him as an “unhappy man” who eventually grew to become a nuisance.

“We employed him as a reporter and he had some talent in that respect and some experience although he’d been out of the business for a while,” Marks said. “(But) he quickly became someone who was difficult to work with. He was sort of looking out for people to say things that he could take offense to. Eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. He did not take that well.”

“We had to call the police to escort him [from] the building,” Marks added.

After being released by WDBJ, Williams filed a report with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about numerous co-workers making racist remarks, although Marks said he couldn’t remember if Parker and Ward were included.

“None of them could be corroborated,” he explained. “We think they were fabricated. We got nothing about that. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismissed the claim and that was that.”

London’s Daily Mail adds:

Warped TV reporter Vester Lee Flanagan exasperated bosses with his ‘stiff and nervous’ delivery, his inability to use a teleprompter – and by wearing a President Obama badge during an election report, Daily Mail Online can reveal.

Management at WDBJ dubbed the failed newsman the ‘human tape recorder’ because he frequently parroted what interviewees had told him rather than doing his own journalism.

Flanagan, 41, clashed repeatedly with photojournalists, belittling them in public and intimidating them with his violent temper, according to internal reports.

He was also censured for wearing an Obama sticker while recording a segment at a polling booth during the 2012 US Presidential Election – a clear breach of journalistic impartiality.

The complaints are outlined in court papers seen by Daily Mail Online that include a scathing performance review carried out prior to his termination in Feb 2013. …

The station filed the documents to rebutt a wrongful termination claim which he had brought, claiming he was the victim of discrimination because he was black and gay. The station won the case.

Flanagan earned a dismal 1 out of 5 score in several categories for his poor communication skills and a failure to show respect to colleagues.

The veteran multimedia journalist was also criticized for missing deadlines and producing reports that were ‘lean on facts’ and left viewers confused. …

Those complaints echoed a May 2014 court filing in which Flanagan sued the station in Roanoke General District Court, seeking unpaid wages and damages for alleged discrimination.

In a sometimes-rambling account of his time at WDBJ Flanagan accused co-workers of racially harassing him by placing a watermelon around the office.

‘The watermelon would appear, then disappear, then appear and disappear, then appear and disappear again only to appear again,’ he wrote in a May 2014 letter to presiding Judge Francis Burkart.

‘This was not an innocent incident. The watermelon was placed in a strategic location.

Flanagan also claimed he was assaulted by a photographer, subjected to a hostile working environment and wrongfully terminated.

He demanded a jury comprised entirely of African American women and independent investigations by the FBI and Justice Department.

‘I realize this is the ultimate “David vs. Goliath” scenario … however I am neither intimidated or fearful,’ he added.

Burkart dismissed the case in July 2014 after a detailed rebuttal from WDBK bosses who argued there was not a ‘single allegation of fact’ to support Flanagan.

Furthermore they submitted pages and pages of complaints and internal emails detailing Flanagan’s poor news judgment, flawed delivery and fiery temper.

‘Your on air performance … continues to be stiff and nervous,’ News director Dan Dennison told Flanagan in a December 2012 email.

‘You hold onto scripts with both hands; even when you have a teleprompter in the studio and never refer to them.

‘This is an unnecessary crutch. Given your level of experience doing live television, our expectation is that your on-air performance should be better.’

Dennison also slammed Flanagan, who reported under the name Bryce Williams, for acting like a ‘human tape recorder’ and taking press releases and interviewees on face value.

‘Your job as a news reporter is to dig for the truth and the facts,’ he said. ‘You have a tendency to repeat instead of report on many stories which leads to thinly sourced material and a lack of substance.’ …

Flanagan’s temper was also a constant worry for bosses at WDBK, who listed a series of violent confrontations between the volatile reporter and his colleagues.

In April 2012 the California-raised Jehovah’s Witness lost his temper and verbally abused two co-workers inside a live truck, leaving them feeling ‘threatened and extremely uncomfortable.’

On May 30 he broke off three times during an interview to berate a photographer for not framing the shot as he wanted.

And six days later he accused a cameraman of taking a shaky shot and started arguing in front of shocked bystanders, according to the complaints.

After getting ‘very angry’ and storming off while filming another July 2012 report Flanagan was warned he would be fired unless he sought help from the company health advocate.

‘This is a mandatory referral requiring your compliance,’ Dennison told Flanagan. ‘Failure to comply will result in termination of employment.’

After continuing to argue with colleagues and averaging just 2.9 out of 5 in his June 2012 performance review, Flanagan was fired in February 2013 due to his ‘unsatisfactory job performance and inability to work as a team member.’

According to the court documents Police were called to remove him from the building after he told staff: ‘Call the police. I’m not leaving. I’m going to make a stink and it’s going to be in the headlines.’

So we have a disgruntled and (according to management) bad employee, a case of workplace violence and possibly mental illness, instead of yet another tired argument for gun control. (Nor is it an argument for concealed-carry, since apparently neither Parker nor Ward saw Flanagan before he started shooting them.)

ABC News also reports that Flanagan had been pitching a story to ABC without saying what the story was, and that ABC received a fax two hours after the shooting:

In the 23-page document faxed to ABC News, the writer says “MY NAME IS BRYCE WILLIAMS” and his legal name is Vester Lee Flanagan II.” He writes what triggered today’s carnage was his reaction to the racism of the Charleston church shooting:

“Why did I do it? I put down a deposit for a gun on 6/19/15. The Church shooting in Charleston happened on 6/17/15…”

“What sent me over the top was the church shooting. And my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them.”

It is unclear whose initials he is referring to. He continues, “As for Dylann Roof? You (deleted)! You want a race war (deleted)? BRING IT THEN YOU WHITE …(deleted)!!!” He said Jehovah spoke to him, telling him to act.

Later in the manifesto, the writer quotes the Virginia Tech mass killer, Seung Hui Cho, calls him “his boy,” and expresses admiration for the Columbine High School killers. “Also, I was influenced by Seung–Hui Cho. That’s my boy right there. He got NEARLY double the amount that Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold got…just sayin.’”

In an often rambling letter to the authorities, and family and friends, he writes of a long list of grievances. In one part of the document, Williams calls it a “Suicide Note for Friends and Family.”

He says has suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work

He says he has been attacked by black men and white females

He talks about how he was attacked for being a gay, black man

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

“The church shooting was the tipping point…but my anger has been building steadily…I’ve been a human powder keg for a while…just waiting to go BOOM!!!!”

Which prompted Charles W. Cooke to call this the first social media murder:

If ever there were an example of the role that fame, narcissism, and notoriety play in the motivation of public killers, we are seeing it today. Not only did the shooter commit his crime on live television, but he has subsequently posted a first-person video of the attacks to his Twitter and Facebook accounts. He is, in real-time, documenting his villainy. …

We now live in a world in which it is possible to kill a person and then to post a high-definition film of the murder a few moments later. Because Twitter and Facebook are effectively “on demand,” anybody who wishes to can implicate themselves in the game. Good people have some responsibility to refuse to do so. We are now in the age of social media. Walter Cronkite isn’t deciding for you any more. You are.

That would be, yes, a political reaction (though more about culture than about one political side), about which Jack Hunter observes:

The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that before Wednesday 39 journalists had died doing their jobs worldwide this year. Parker and Ward are the first American journalists to die for their profession since 2007, when Oakland Post editor-in-chief Chauncey Bailey was shot to death by an employee of Your Black Muslim Bakery, who allegedly killed Bailey to prevent a story about the bakery’s financial connections.

Parker and Ward died doing their jobs, though you would not think getting a live interview with a chamber of commerce official at the crack of dawn would end fatally. Live shots have become staples of TV news as the technology has made them considerably less complicated than they used to be. (Watching the video I wonder who called 911, because I assume Parker and Ward were the only people from the station at the scene. There may have been a live truck operator, but I’m guessing there wasn’t.)

This wasn’t, however, a case of someone dying while covering a war, as with The New Republic’s Michael Kelly and NBC’s David Bloom during the Iraq war. Nor was it a reporter assassinated from reporting things the subject of the reporting didn’t want reported, as happens far too often in Latin America. It happened during a seemingly innocuous live TV appearance, something that happens every day in each of the 210 U.S. TV markets, from New York City to Glendive, Mont.

I wonder if TV stations will start either reducing the number of live shots (many of which are done because they can do them, not out of any actual news value), or increase (or ask for by local police) security during live shots. Generally there isn’t any, which is why sometimes live shots include people who are not intended to be part of the live shot. Usually that’s not dangerous, and can be entertaining to watch, but not Wednesday.

Part of me wonders how this — not a live TV murder, but murders of journalists — hasn’t happened more often. I would never equate what journalists do to what police officers and firefighters do, or our military — engage in an occupation or service in which your next day at work may be your last on Earth. The occupational dangers of journalism are more health-related — too much drinking and smoking, eating bad food and not getting enough exercise.

But journalism is a line of work in which, unlike most other occupations, the product of everything you do is public, including mistakes. (Sometimes people think errors or omissions were done deliberately or with malign intent, instead of their being just mistakes.) Journalism also has become a public line of work. Putting the faces of reporters on TV, on media websites and in print means that more people know you than you know.

Journalism is also a line of work in which people can get very angry at you beyond reactions to mistakes. That includes, for instance, people you report about who don’t want to be reported about — someone facing criminal charges, or involved in some sort of public scandal, for example. (More than once I have told people who didn’t like being in the newspaper that the fact of the criminal charges they faced was public record. Many people do not appreciate the existence of public records.) The angered increasingly includes people who disagree with your publicly expressed opinion. (Which is how William F. Buckley came to name his autobiography Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.)

One reason that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has become unexpectedly popular, I believe, is Trump’s taking on journalists, including Megyn Kelly of Fox and, earlier this week in Dubuque, Jorge Ramos of Univision. A lot of people don’t like journalists, period, and a lot of people assume that the sins of some journalists — sloppiness with the facts, advocacy instead of reporting, partisan or ideological slant — are what all journalists do. (Many people also seem to not realize that the First Amendment is for everyone, not just journalists.)

When I was an intern at a Madison TV station as a UW–Madison student, one Sunday morning a viewer called the newsroom to express his displeasure over our not carrying auto racing (an infomercial may have been programmed instead) by saying “Somebody’s going to blow up your fucking station” over disagreement with our programming choices. (More like “their” programming choices, since an intern has exactly zero influence with those who decide programming.) That required a call to the station’s general manager, then the Madison police. The station is still there.

A year into my first full-time job, I covered a contentious school board meeting that required publicly standing up to the school board president for the school board’s ignorance of the state’s Open Meeting Law. A week later, someone called the radio station (for which I announced sports, not news, and not full-time) to tell me I was going to be run off the road and beaten for my reporting work. That didn’t happen, but I decided to start carrying my aluminum bat in my car just in case. More recently, I got either a prediction of a threat about my immortal soul after my run-in with Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino, but the source of the prediction/threat lacks standing, as the lawyers would say.

All of that was back in the day when people were paragons of self-control and self-restraint compared with today, and when our coping skills may have been better than they seem to be today. In the same way that I have predicted in this space assassinations of elected officials and their supporters, I don’t think another eight years will go by before another American journalist is murdered.