Police shoot gunman in hostage drama

Police shot a man who held hostages for several hours yesterday at the Discovery Channel Headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, authorities said. The hostages were safe and the gunman was in custody but his condition was unknown by late yesterday, police said.

The ordeal started when the gunman fired several shots and took at least one person hostage at the Discovery Channel headquarters near Washington, media reports said.

Police could be seen in live television pictures, cordoning off the building and evacuating the area in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland.

Local media reports quoted police as saying the man entered the lobby of the building and fired a weapon before declaring: “Nobody is going anywhere.”

“Right now we can confirm that it’s an Asian male” gunman, Montgomery County police spokesman Angela Cruz said, adding that police had opened communications with the suspect.

Discovery employee Lisa Lucas told TBD TV the building was in lockdown and an unknown number of employees were sheltering in their offices.

Police would not confirm local news reports that the gunman was James Jay Lee, a man with a reported history of protest against the Discovery Channel.

NBC reported that in March 2008, Mr Lee was convicted of disorderly conduct, given six months of supervised probation, and fined $500.

Local news reports say police and SWAT snipers had been posted around the building.

Video images showed a large portion of normally busy ­downtown Silver Spring barricaded off, and people conducting orderly evacuations from the complex, including employees of a daycare centre wheeling an infant across an intersection in a crib.

WUSA television reported that the assailant posted a list of demands to the Discovery Channel, including that the cable station “broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet.”