Pro-Life Ping
Hostage taker James Lee influenced by Al Gore film
* September 2nd, 2010 7:09 am ET
* By Jim Kouri, Law Enforcement Examiner
A man who was allegedly angry with the Discovery Channel’s environmental lineup, and entered the company’s national headquarters outside Washington, DC and took several people hostage at gunpoint, was negatively influenced by Al Gore’s film “An In Convenient Truth.”
The suspect — identified as James Lee — also had a “suicide vest” with explosives strapped to his body. A police tactical unit, however, was able to rescue the hostages and killed the enraged hostage-taker.
The three hostages — two Discovery Channel employees and a security officer — escaped unharmed after a four-hour hostage incident Wednesday. Following several hours negotiating with the gunman, SWAT officers moved in when Lee was observed pulling out a handgun and pointing it at a hostage on a CCTV monitor, according to Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger. SWAT officers shot and killed the suspect and rescued the hostages unharmed.
This hostage situation was not the first time Lee had targeted Discovery’s headquarters. In 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 Channel and The Learning Channel children’s shows. He believed 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 on his Internet blog.
Yesterday, Lee went on his hostage-taking rampage at 1 PM (eastern) and by 5 PM (eastern) a police tactical unit reportedly shot and killed the suspect and freed his hostages.
According to a police source, Lee was influenced by radical environmentalist and author Daniel Allen and former Vice President Al Gore.
According to Fox News, Lee wrote on his blog: “All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.”
“It’s interesting that most of the news coverage omits the influence of Al Gore on this gunman. Had he been affiliated with the Tea Party movement or was influenced by Sarah Palin, that tidbit would have resulted in a feeding frenzy. But here’s a madman with a gun and explosives who was influenced by Al Gore and the environmental movement, and the silence is deafening,” said former police detective Sid Franes.