SILVER SPRING, Md. (WTAQ) - The man who took people hostage Wednesday at the Discovery Channel headquarters is dead.
Police confirmed the three male hostages held by James J. Lee at the Silver Spring, Maryland, facility were safely evacuated. One of the hostages is a security officer.
At a news conference, Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said it appeared the hostages were chosen at random. Police kept track of Lee on a closed-circuit security system and used the telephone to negotiate with him during a tense four-hour standoff, then shot him.
Lee was known to be a protestor of the Discovery Channel. According to the Huffington Post, Lee is thought to be behind the website SaveThePlanet.com, which lists numerous demands for the Discovery Channel.
One demand calls for the network and its affiliates to have daily programs based on the book "My Ishmael," which suggests ways of saving the planet. The website supposedly created by Lee says, "people must live without giving birth to more filthy human children." The site also says Discovery must encourage human sterilization and infertility.
