Virginia shooting: killer turns gun on himself after confessing to murders of

Following the shooting of reporter Alison Parker and videographer Adam Ward live on the air at a Virginia shopping centre early on Wednesday morning, the gunman gained notoriety by uploading his own footage of the attack. One video clearly showed a gun as the person filming approached the female reporter.

Twitter and Facebook responded quickly with suspensions of the offending accounts under the name Bryce Williams-the on-air name of the alleged shooter-but not before the accounts, which each appeared to have been created on August 18 with nothing more than innocuous cat videos at the time, had their video posts shared widely.

Last week Flanagan posted video highlights of his career on Facebook, including footage of him reporting details from murder scenes. But not before the videos automatically played on the social media sites for anyone who viewed his accounts or a retweet of the original post. Facebook said it removed the profile for violating community standards that “prohibit you from celebrating any crimes you’ve committed”.

According to WDBJ7’s Twitter account, “This is the suspected shooter, Vester Flanigan, who is also known as Bryce Williams”.

He was fired from the station, according to WDBJ, although the reason was not made public.

UPDATE, 12:10 p.m.: Police have confirmed that Flanagan shot himself during the pursuit on I-66, but is not dead. “YouTube has clear policies against videos containing gratuitous violence and we remove them when they are flagged”, a spokesperson said.

This morning, a disturbing video was uploaded to social media.