Updated on August 26 at 2:37 p.m. ET
A former reporter at the CBS affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia, shot and killed two journalists from the station during a live broadcast Wednesday, and wounded a third person. He then led police on an hours-long chase before fatally shooting himself.
Police identified the gunman as Vester L. Flanagan, a former reporter at WDBJ7, who used the on-air name Bryce Williams. The victims are a reporter, Alison Parker, 24, and a cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, the station confirmed.
The gunman posted a video to Twitter and Facebook several hours after the shooting. The footage, filmed from a shooter’s vantage point, showed the gunman approaching the victims. Both Twitter and Facebook suspended his accounts soon after he posted videos of the shooting.
Ward was filming Parker interview Vicki Gardner, the head of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce, at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia, at about 6:45 a.m. The gunman walked up to them, and fired multiple shots. Gardner was shot in the back, and is in stable condition after undergoing surgery at a nearby hospital.
WDBJ reported that the gunman is in critical condition. Virginia State Police in a Facebook post said he “was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment of life-threatening injuries.” Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton said the gunman was pronounced dead at Inova Fairfax Hospital in the Washington, D.C., area at approximately 1:30 p.m. He said the gunman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.