Police shot and killed a man armed with a handgun who had taken three people hostage inside the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring after deciding the captives were in danger.
The man, identified by a law enforcement official as James J. Lee, 43, of Silver Spring, was a radical environmental activist who had protested at the Discovery building in the past over programming he felt endangered the planet.
Police said the hostages were not injured.
An explosive device strapped to Lee’s back went off as police fired at 4:48 p.m., but Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said he doesn’t know which happened first.
Lee has created Web sites calling for people to rally against Discovery programming. After he was shot, police continued to look for explosive devices they said they believed were in the building.
Lee entered the building at about 1 p.m. and displayed a handgun, according to Manger. He had metallic canisters strapped to his body.
By 2 p.m., swarms of police and FBI SWAT teams canvassed downtown Silver Spring, stretching police tape hundreds of yards from the building in all directions.
While police negotiated with the suspect, Discovery employees either evacuated or locked themselves in offices, as directed by a company e-mail. A day care center in the building was cleared, with children hustled across Colesville Road to a McDonald’s for reunions with anxious parents.
Andrew Wilson, an art director for Discovery, said he hid in a conference room with other employees after receiving the e-mail.
Wilson said “panic started to build” when employees learned what was going on through their phones. “Then people started leaving in mass exodus down the stairs,” he said. “There was talk among workers that the person who did it was an Asian who protested outside our building in the past over the channel’s programming.”
Discovery employee R.P. Shaub said “people started getting scared when they saw the SWAT team.”
Matt Deprey, also a Discovery employee, said, “No one expected anything like that to happen here.”
Police negotiated with Lee for more than three hours, during which, Manger said, Lee showed a “wide range of emotions.” Manger would not comment on whether police had identified a motive.
Lee ran a Web site, SaveThePlanetProtest.com, that criticizes Discovery’s programming as destructive to the environment.
“We are running out of time to save this planet and the Discovery Channel is a big part of the problem, not the solution,” Lee wrote on his site. “All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions.” He said he had an “awakening” after watching former Vice President Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.”
In March 2008, Lee was ordered to remain at least 500 feet from the Discovery building — or face up to two months in jail — after he was charged with disorderly conduct for throwing thousands of dollars in the air during a rally outside the building. He spent more than two weeks in jail after that arrest and was evaluated by a state psychiatrist.
