Three hostages - two Discovery Communications employees
and a security guard - escaped unhurt after the four-hour standoff Wednesday in
Silver Spring, just outside Washington. After several hours negotiating with
the gunman, tactical officers moved in when authorities monitoring him on
building security cameras saw him pull out a handgun and point it at a hostage,
said Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger.
A law enforcement official speaking on condition of
anonymity because the investigation was ongoing identified James J. Lee as the
suspect.
It wasn't the first time Lee, a homeless former
Californian, had targeted Discovery's headquarters. In February 2008, he was
charged with disorderly conduct for staging a "Save the Planet
Protest."
In court and online, he had demanded an end to Discovery
Communications LLC's shows such as TLC's "Kate Plus 8" and "19
Kids and Counting." Instead, he said, the network should air
"programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility."
"Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and
are wrecking what's left of the planet with their false morals and breeding
cultures," Lee wrote in a bitter manifesto on his website.
Lee, 43, also objected to Discovery's environmental
programming. He wrote in 2008 that a show called "Planet Green" was
"about more PRODUCTS to make MONEY, not actual solutions."
Police say the gunman burst into the building about 1
p.m. and took hostages in the lobby on the first floor. A gun wasn't his only
weapon, as an explosive device on his body detonated when police shot him,
Manger said. Police were trying to determine whether two boxes and two
backpacks the gunman had also contained explosives and authorities sent in a
robot to disarm a device on the gunman's body.
NBC TV News reported that after its producers called
Discovery's phone number, a man identifying himself as James J. Lee got on and
said he had a gun and several bombs.
"I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to
go off. I have a device that if I drop it, if I drop it, it will ...
explode," the man told NBC.
Police Capt. Paul Starks said the suspect had shot a gun
at least once and that authorities believe he was acting alone but were
investigating all possibilities.
Lee's mission against the Discovery Channel goes back at
least a few years. In the February 2008 protest in which he was arrested, he
threw fistfuls of cash in the air and paid homeless people to carry signs
condemning the network.
Police found his pockets stuffed with more than $20,000,
according to court records.
Lee served two weeks in jail after his arrest during
which doctors evaluated his competency to stand trial. County State Attorney
John McCarthy said Lee was ordered to stay 500 feet away from Discovery
headquarters as part of his probation, which ended two weeks ago.
Lee faulted the Discovery Channel for shows as varied as
"Future Weapons," "It Takes a Thief" and "Planet
Green." Instead, he sought programming based on "My Ishmael," a
book by philosopher Daniel Quinn in which a telepathic gorilla instructs a
12-year-old girl on society's failings. On his MySpace page, Lee said his
heroes were Quinn and "Star Trek" commander James T. Kirk.
Quinn said in an interview from his Houston home that Lee
misinterpreted his book's message about the folly of continually increasing
food production to meet population demands.
The author said he hadn't heard of Lee before Wednesday
but called his death "pretty horrible." Had he been able to speak
with him, he would have told Lee "he's giving a bad name to the ideas that
he's trying to espouse." Lee in 2008 also held a related contest promising
$200,000 worth of Hawaiian real estate for the best essay proposing a
save-the-planet TV show.
The Maui News and KHON-TV reported that Lee had lived in
the Lahaina area of West Maui. The newspaper reported that he was a 1985
graduate of Lahainaluna High School and his former classmates and principal
described him as a normal person who didn't cause any trouble.
"As far as I'm concerned, he was a good kid,"
former Lahainaluna principal Henry Ariyoshi told The Maui News.
None of the 1,900 people who work in the Discovery
Channel building were hurt Wednesday.
"We're relieved that it ended without any harm to
our employees," said David Leavy, Discovery's executive vice president for
corporate affairs.