TV Reporter and cameraman shot during live broadcast

Two journalists were shot to death Wednesday morning while broadcasting live from a strip mall in Moneta, Virginia, near Roanoke, the police said.

Video from the shooting appeared to show a television crew from WDBJ7 in Roanoke being hit by gunshots. The station confirmed that its journalists had been shot.

According to WDBJ, the Roanoke affiliate of CBS, the two journalists, Alison Parker, 24, and Adam Ward, a 27-year-old cameraman, were covering a story at Bridgewater Plaza, a lakeside shopping and recreational sports plaza, when they were shot around 6:45 a.m.

The video was distributed online shortly after the episode. In the video, Parker is seen interviewing a woman and then jumping back and screaming as shots ring out. Eight shots can be heard before the camera cuts back to an anchor at the station.

According to The Roanoke Times, the woman being interviewed was Vicki Gardner, head of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce. She was shot in the back and was in surgery, the paper reported.

“It is with extreme sadness that we report WDBJ7’s Alison Parker and Adam Ward were killed in an attack this morning,” the station wrote on Twitter.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia told WTOP, a Washington radio station, that authorities believed the gunman to be a “disgruntled employee.”

“We know who the suspect is,” McAuliffe said. He said the state police were on the scene and working with local law enforcement to capture the suspect.

The station’s president and general manager, Jeffrey A. Marks, said on air soon after the shooting that officials believed a man had “barged into where they were and fired” the shots that killed Ward and Parker.

“We heard screaming, and then we heard nothing, and the camera fell,” Marks said. “We are choosing not to run the video of that right now because, frankly, we don’t need to see it again, and our staff doesn’t need to see it again.”

He added, “How can this individual have robbed these families, the families of Alison and Adam, of their lives and their happiness and their love, for whatever reason?”

A spokesman for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to messages.

Chris Hurst, a WDBJ anchor, said on Twitter that he and Parker had been dating and wanted to get married.

“She was the most radiant woman I ever met,” Hurst wrote. “And for some reason she loved me back. She loved her family, her parents and her brother.”

Hurst said Ward, who was engaged, and Parker had worked together regularly.

According to a biography of Parker on the WDJB website, she grew up near Martinsville, Virginia, and had worked as an intern at the television station. A 2012 graduate of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, she was a news editor at the college paper, The Breeze, and later worked at WCTI NewsChannel 12 in its Jacksonville, North Carolina, bureau, which is near Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune.

A fan of white-water kayaking and community theater, Parker liked to play with her parents’ dog, Jack, the station’s website said.

“She learned the ropes of journalism in J.M.U.'s School of Media Arts and Design,” the website said. “During her last semester in school, she learned how to produce newscasts at WHSV, an ABC/Fox affiliate station in Harrisonburg.”

Ward graduated from Salem High School and Virginia Tech.

“This is a horrific day for our family and the community we serve,” the station’s chief meteorologist, Brent Watts, said on Twitter.

--2015 New York Times News Service