James Lee was shot by police after talking with negotiators for four hours on Wednesday. He had taken three people hostage earlier in the day, all the hostages survived.
Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said there were moments when Lee was calm, but it was obvious during the negotiations that he had mental health issues. Lee rarely communicated with the hostages during the ordeal, and kept them lying on the ground. His concerns were with the Discovery Channel, and he stayed focused on that, according to Manger.
At one point during the negotiations, Lee turn and pointed his gun at a hostage. When that happened, a police sniper immediately shot and killed him.
Spokesman for the Discovery Channel, David Leavy, said the company was familiar with Lee, as he had held protests at the network previously. In 2008, after one of Lee’s protests, a judge had ordered Lee to stay 500 feet away from the Discovery Channel’s building.
According to a breaking story from ABC news, Lee was arrested in 2003 for human trafficking, after attempting to smuggle a woman, hidden in his car, from Mexico to the US. At the time, Lee said it was something he was forced to do after being robbed and choked in a Mexican hotel.
Before the hostage taking, Lee posted a rambling manifesto on his site. In it, he writes about the evils of the human race, and demands that the Discovery Channel stop encouraging “the birth of any more parasitic human infants”. Lee believed, according to the post, that humans were filthy and destructive and needed to quit breeding and polluting the planet.
(image: Montgomery County Police)
