WATCH ABOVE: Boyfriend and co-worker of Virginia TV reporter tears up while showing anniversary gift from victim.
Alison Parker, 24, and Adam Ward, 27, two journalists doing an on-air report were killed in a shocking, early morning shooting on Wednesday in Virginia.
The two journalists were doing a live report on the 50th anniversary of a local tourist attraction in Moneta, Virginia about 41 kilometres outside of Roanoke when they were shot. The interview subject, Vicki Gardner, the head of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce, was also shot and injured and is in hospital.
Parker grew up in Martinsville, Virginia had been working as the morning news reporter at WDBJ7 for slightly over a year according to news station manager Jeffrey Marks.
WATCH: Chris Hurst, the boyfriend and co-worker of WDBJ7 TV reporter Alison Parker, 24, spoke to the press about his girlfriend and their relationship. Parker was fatally shot while on-air on Wednesday morning.
She had originally been an intern at the station after graduating from James Madison University in 2012 before leaving and coming back to work on the morning show.
WATCH: WDBJ7 News pays tributes to their fallen colleagues Alison Parker and Adam Ward.
She largely reported on local events and breaking news around Virginia.
According to a tweet from her colleague Chris Hurst, the two had been in a relationship for nine months and planned to get married. He wrote a series of tweets shortly after the news of her death was announced, calling her “the most radiant woman I ever met.”
“I am numb,” he wrote in a tweet.
Marks relayed more words Hurst had for his partner on-air shortly after the shooting, saying “she was everything and brightened up every room.”
“No matter what was going on, she was a positive person,” Marks said.
Adam Ward, 27, was a video journalist with the Virginia news station, and had been working there since 2011 when he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Media studies from Virginia Tech, according to his LinkedIn profile.
According to a report on the WDBJ7 website, Ward had been planning on getting out of news, reportedly telling his fiance, “I think I’m going to do something else.”
Marks said during an interview on CNN that Ward was engaged to a producer at the news station who was working in the control room when the shooting happened.
“I want to say that the WDBJ7 team is the best news team I’ve worked with in my 42 years of broadcasting, and this kind of loss will resonate in these halls for a long, long time as we remember, in the short lives, what dedicated journalism they produced and what outstanding people they were,” Marks said during a statement on WDBJ7.
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