The father of a journalist gunned down by a former colleague live on television has said he still cannot comprehend the horror of her death.
Paying tribute to his daughter, Andy Parker described Alison, 24, as a young woman with ambition but not one of life’s natural risk-takers.
He told The Washington Post that he feared the worst when he learned of the shootings in Roanoke, Virginia, in which she and cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, died.
He said: “My grief is unbearable. Is this real? Am I going to wake up? I am crying my eyes out. I don’t know if there’s anybody in this world or another father who could be more proud of their daughter.”
Mr Parker, a banking industry recruiter, said that his difficulty in coming to terms with events was made more difficult because it happened in their home state.
Advertisement
“Some journalists want to be right out there covering Isil [Islamic State]. She did not want that,” he said. “She was not keen on jumping into the middle of a firefight someplace.”
He told the Post that the fact that her killer Vester Flanagan, a failed television reporter from the same station WDBJ-7, a CBS affiliate station, had recorded the act only made matters worse.
He compared it to propaganda videos posted online by Isis. “It’s like showing those beheadings,” he said.
“I am not going to watch it. I can’t watch it. I can’t watch any news. All it would do is rip out my heart further than it already it is.”
Colleagues paid their tributes to their slain colleagues as more details about Flanagan’s erratic and disruptive behaviour that led to his dismissal from the station two years ago were revealed.
Advertisement
According to documents released in the wake of the killings there was “a heated confrontation” with another reporter on April 28, 2012.
Shortly after that, Flanagan, who used the name Bryce Williams while on the air, got into arguments with photographers,
In a disciplinary note, Dan Dennison, an executive at the station wrote to him warning that his behaviour “resulted in one or more of your co-workers feeling threatened or uncomfortable.”
He added: “We want you to work on the tone of your interpersonal relationships and exercise great care in dealing with stressful situations or disagreements and your response to them.
“You need to always work as a member of a collaborative team and allow your teammates to do their jobs and not assume that you alone are concerned with high-quality standards.”
Advertisement
Flanagan was finally sacked after continued complaints by colleagues, poor performance and breaking the station’s code of conduct by wearing a badge supporting Barack Obama.
He responded by telling the station: “You better call police because I’m going to make a big stink. This is not right.”
He later sued the station claiming racial discrimination but the case was dismissed last year after a judge found that the matters had been “fully and completely resolved and compromised”.