A gunman originally from Maui took over the Discovery Channel network's headquarters in Maryland this morning. The standoff ended with police shooting him to death. Police say 43-year-old James Lee took three people hostage with a gun. Lee also had canisters strapped to his body he claimed were explosives.
"Anytime there is a use of deadly force there is an intensive ongoing investigation that will go thru investigative process,” said Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger, “but based on the information we had, we believed that the hostages lives were in danger."
All three of the hostages escaped safely.Police say lee was upset about the network's programming and had been arrested outside the building back in February 2008 after a protest in which he threw money into the air. Lee had posted a manifesto of demands he had made of the Discovery Channel, wanting them to focus attention on overpopulation..
Lee grew up on Maui where friends and classmates remember him as a sometimes quiet but kind person, and someone who always wanted his voice to be heard.
Pictured in the Lahainaluna yearbook, the class of 1985 graduate shows the same smile those who knew him growing up say he always put on no matter what.
“People always thought of him being a loner, and he did get picked on a lot but he also laughed a lot along with being picked on,”said Raynette Romo, who grew up on the same street with him and attended school from elementary through high school with him. “It wasn't like you could bully him and he would go on the side and start crying "
"They called him rock head because they used to throw rocks at him when he would walk down Lahainaluna Road from high school,” a former classmate and coworker said.
"This is the fist time I'm hearing about him becoming, going to the dark side, say,” said former high school classmate Tonya Kuaana. “I can only recall him being really happy kind of guy, but you never know what's going on underneath."
A friend and former coworker says the deaths of his parents, especially his mother, seemed to trigger a change in lee's demeanor.
“He went from being a full on religious person carrying his bible and stuff and preaching to everybody to completely flipped around and basically hating god because god didn't save his mother,” he said.
Lee's environmental push was apparent even decades ago as a high school student -- when he decided to conserve water, here's how Romo, his gym partner, described what lee did next.
“He decided to not wash his uniform for a whole week,” Romo said. “I mean, it was stinky stinky stinky. He made his point, you know, he made his point clearly to us. He said you know what, we're going to have to start saving water."
While many are surprised and shocked at lee's actions at the Discovery Channel, some see from his past what he may have been thinking.
“James was always, when we were growing up, wanting to be heard,” Romo said. “And if he had to go to an extreme he probably would have gone to an extreme. He was going to save the earth, and if it was his way to do his last breath to save earth, this is what he did"
