News August 27, 2015
News Anchor Recalls Horrors of Virginia Shootings
“Extra” was in Virginia today speaking with Kimberly McBroom, the reporter anchoring the news when colleagues Alison Parker and Adam Ward were shot on camera by Vester Lee Flanagan.
She said that at first she had no idea what happened.
“I heard the popping sound. They were at the lake, they were doing a feature story. It wasn't a standoff, it wasn't a dangerous situation, it was just a feature. I heard it and I saw the camera shot go like this, and I thought, 'Did Adam's light go out on his camera? Did something blow?' It is a rural area, so they could have been firing shots in the distance. They could have been hunting. Anything but this. A car backfiring.”
She continued, “There were like ten different things that went through my head, this was not one of them at all. The longer we went without hearing from them. We tried to text them, 'Hey what's going on, what was that?” The longer we went on without hearing a response from them, the more it was clear to us something was very wrong.”
McBroom said they could hear officers arrive on the scene via Adam's camera, and hear some details on a police scanner.
“Of course, we were waiting to hear confirmation, how many people were shot, were they hurt, because we had to handle it as journalists. We can't jump to conclusions. Until you get confirmation, you don't know, and you are holding on to hope, and we were clinging to it for ours and for Adam's fiancée in the control room.”
“Extra” also interviewed General Manager Jeff Marks, who noted that Flanagan “had issues with many people he worked with.”
He remembered Alison and Adam as “wonderful, fun-loving, enjoyable people who were very good at what they were doing.”
Marks said the station's “mission yesterday and today has been to make sure that we have a chance to grieve and breathe, but also to put one step in front of the other and get the news out, and our team is doing a great job of it.”
