During the existence of live television, various tragedies have occurred that end in people dying. There were also murders among them. “Moscow Evening” has collected a selection of four cases captured live on TV channels.
Journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward are killed
On August 26, 2015, in the US state of Virginia, two employees of the local TV channel WDBJ7 – reporter Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward – were reporting live on tourism development. Journalists on the street interviewed Vicki Gardner, executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce. At that moment, the former employee of this channel, reporter Vester Flanagan, burst into the room they were in and fired several shots. The two journalists were killed and Gardner was wounded in the back. Flanagan then tried to escape from the police in a car, but after several hours of pursuit he decided to shoot himself, but he did not die immediately, but in the hospital. Two hours after the shooting, ABC News received a fax from the killer, who described it as a response to the shooting at an African church in Charleston, which had occurred two months earlier. Flanagan himself was black, which he said caused him to suffer racial discrimination and bullying at work. He added that Parker once made a racist remark about him and even “sat him down,” and Ward wrote a complaint about him to the human resources department.
Assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald
On November 22, 1963, the world was shocked by the news of the assassination of the thirty-fifth President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. The killer turned out to be 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald. He was soon arrested. On November 24, he was taken through the basement of the police department to the county jail. Oswald’s transfer received extensive live media coverage. At some point, a man with a gun emerged from the crowd and shot Oswald in the stomach. The man was arrested and Oswald was taken to the hospital, where he died approximately two hours later. The killer turns out to be nightclub owner Jack Ruby. He stated that he lost his head after Kennedy’s assassination, and the motivation behind his actions was that he wanted to spare the president’s wife the discomfort associated with considering this case in court. Ruby was initially sentenced to death, but the sentence was later appealed. However, in 1967 he died of lung cancer. Interestingly, Ruby died in the same hospital where Oswald died and where Kennedy was pronounced dead.
Assassination of politician Enjiro Asanuma
On October 12, 1960, in Tokyo, the Japanese politician, head of the country’s Socialist Party, Enjiro Anasuma, held a debate with his opponent, which was broadcast on television. The discussion proceeded as usual and no incidents occurred. However, when Anasuma was about to leave the building, a 17-year-old boy jumped in and stabbed the politician in the stomach and chest with a traditional Japanese sword. Asanuma died before arriving at the hospital. The killer turned out to be student Otoya Yamaguchi, a follower of far-right views. A few days later, Yamaguchi committed suicide in prison.
Throughout human history, various sects have often emerged and had a strong influence on society. If some of these sects were relatively harmless, some turned out to be so dangerous that they deprived their followers of reason, property, and even life. About the three most terrible cults – in the material “Moscow Evening”.