So you’ve checked out this morning’s story about shooter Vester Lee Flanagan, the man who live tweeted the video of him killing two former colleagues at a Virginian TV station. Maybe you’ve had a look at the video, I did and it’s not pretty viewing. So what would drive a person to do such a thing and what else do we know about Flanagan?

As is to be expected this is the story dominating headlines around the world so we’re going to trawl through some of the more well-known sites and pull some quotes from each. We’ll start at the BBC:

[He] apparently sent a rambling fax to ABC News describing himself as a “human powder keg” shortly after the attack…

In the fax, a man said to be Flanagan describes suffering discrimination and bullying for being gay and black…

The writer says he suffered racism and homophobia at work, and expresses admiration for the teenagers who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

He said the attack in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine black churchgoers were killed in June this year, was what “sent me over the top”.

A picture of a very disturbed man starting to form here. This is the New York Times describing his turbulent past at the TV station where he worked with the deceased:

There was “a heated confrontation” with another reporter on April 28, 2012. Less than a month later, Mr. Flanagan, who used the name Bryce Williams while on the air, clashed with a photographer. And six days after that, there was another dispute between Mr. Flanagan and a photographer. The conduct, a station executive told Mr. Flanagan in a memorandum, “resulted in one or more of your co-workers feeling threatened or uncomfortable,” the documents showed…

As the winter wore on, station officials decided to fire Mr. Flanagan. When they told him, an internal memorandum recounted, he responded, “You better call police because I’m going to make a big stink. This is not right.”

Station officials chose to contact the police, and officers physically removed Mr. Flanagan. In one instance, one document said, Mr. Flanagan tossed a baseball cap at one executive. Another memo said Mr. Flanagan handed over a wooden cross to an executive, saying, “You’ll need this.”

Mr. Flanagan later sued the station for, among other complaints, retaliation, wrongful termination and racial discrimination.

In May 2014, Mr. Flanagan wrote to a judge in Roanoke and said that his experiences at the station were “nothing short of vile, disgusting and inexcusable,” and he demanded that a jury of African-American women hear a civil lawsuit against the station.

The case was dismissed in 2014 after a judge found that the matters had been “fully and completely resolved and compromised.”

Buzzfeed has some information on Flanagan:

Thomas Faison, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said Wednesday investigators had recovered a Glock 19 pistol that belonged to Flanagan.

Faison said the gun had been purchased “weeks ago,” and that he had apparently passed a required background check. Flanagan also had a second gun, Faison added…

He also reportedly made references to Virginia Tech killer Seung Hui Cho and Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylann Klebold.

“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’,” he wrote [in the fax sent to ABC]…

Flanagan was born in 1973 in Oakland, California, where his mother worked as a teacher for more than 37 years…

He wrote on Twitter that he was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and previously worked as a “high paid ‘companion’” and model.

He stated that he attended San Francisco State University, with university officials confirming to BuzzFeed News a “Vester Lee Flanagan” graduated in 1995 with a degree in radio and television.

TIME spoke to some former co-workers and friends who dished the dirt on working and growing up with Flanagan:

Recalling one of a number of incidents, Wilmoth said that co-workers meant to tease Flanagan for a story he did on a spelling bee that made it sound as if the winner would get a case of Girl Scouts, rather than cookies sold by the group.

“The next day, somebody had a Girl Scout emblem on their desk and we made some copies of it and taped them to his computer,” she said. “If he had only laughed we would have all been friends forever. But he didn’t laugh … he got mad. And that was when I realized he wasn’t part of the collegiality that exists in a newsroom and he removed himself from it”…

Virgil Barker, who grew up on the same tree-lined street, recalled his childhood friend Wednesday with fondness.

“I know you want to hear that he was a monster, but he was the complete opposite,” Barker said. “He was very, very loving.”

I’m pretty sure that image of the loving kid has been shattered the world over, we don’t need a childhood friend to tell us he is a monster to have our beliefs affirmed.

[sources:bbc&nytimes&buzzfeed&time]