US POLICE HAVE SHOT DEAD the lone gunman who had taken hostages at the Discovery Channel building in Maryland today.
James Jay Lee, 43, had entered the building at around 1pm local time armed with a handgun and wearing possible explosive devices.
Police fired on Lee when they believed the hostages’s lives were in danger, killing him.
At least three people were being held by Lee in the lobby of the Discovery building, and authorities said that none of the hostages was injured.
He had released a list of demands, calling on Discovery to help save the planet from environmental catastrophe and referring to people as “filth”.
He said that programming should encourage infertility and sterilization, adding: “All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.”
The statement, which contains material some may find offensive, said that the earth did not need humans, and called for “solutions” to immigration, saying: “Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies.”
Earlier, Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger confirmed that Lee had taken a small number of hostages and was negotiating with police.
His brother-in-law Thomas Leonard described his behaviour before today’s incident as “very erratic”. He said Lee had a lack of respect for authority, be it family or civil authority, and he had alienated himself from the family.
Leonard said he believed that that certain family bereavements had contributed to Lee becoming a “darker type of character”.
Lee had been arrested in 2008 after throwing money at the same building, as seen in the video below, and at the time had released a six-page document urging the Discovery Channel to to broadcast to the world their “commitment to save the planet”. That statement contained many of the same expressions carried in today’s list of demands.
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