A man who was shot by police after reportedly making a bomb threat at a Baltimore TV news station now faces felony charges as he remains hospitalized for non-life-threatening injuries. “The robot removed those devices, which included his clothing”, Baltimore City Police Department spokesman T.J. Smith said. Police say he refused to take his hands out of his pockets, so a police sniper shot him at least three times. Police later determined that what the man claimed to be a bomb consisted of aluminum-wrapped chocolate bars duct-taped to a flotation device.
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Earlier, the television station had been evacuated after the suspect set a vehicle ablaze in the parking lot, entered the lobby and vowed to set off a bomb.
Smith described the suspect as a 25-year-old white male from Howard County. “He had a flash drive, said he had information he wanted to get on the air”.
Baltimore Police Chief Kevin Davis said it is unfortunate that freaky occurrences such as Thursday’s “very, very unusual event” were becoming common in America.
The flash drive contained videos of the man talking to the camera about what he believed were government conspiracies, WBA:L-TV reports.
Edward Brizzi says he agrees with how police handled the situation. He then walked outside, followed by heavily armed officers.
He says the man gave a flash drive to a security guard and said he wanted the station to broadcast it. Smith does not know what was on the flash drive.
“They have to remove the devices that were around him, and that’s what the robot did”.
Station employees and visitors, meanwhile, were safely evacuated from the building as a precaution. The suspect was wearing a costume and something that appeared to have wires on it, authorities said, and inside his jacket there appeared to be an explosive device.
The man in the mask came out of the building at one point and slowly advanced toward police officers, ignoring their orders to take his hands out of his pockets, according to Smith.
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The man was wearing a white, one-piece panda suit with a surgical mask and sunglasses, news director Mike Tomko said on the station’s website.
