‘Bomb’ Suspect Who Threatened Fox45 Baltimore Building Suffered ‘Mental Breakdown,’ Says Father

Editor’s Note: The original post said the thumb drive contained information relating to astrology–it’s really astronomy. I apologize for the mix up. The post has been corrected.

The man who threatened to blow up the Fox45 building in Baltimore yesterday suffered a mental breakdown, according to his father. The suspect dressed in a badger suit and entered the building, saying he possessed a thumb drive with information related to the Panama Papers. The Papers detailed how the uber-wealthy utilized offshore tax havens. When the suspect, described as a 25-year-old male, arrived at the Fox45 building, he wanted to get this information on air. The news director at the station refused, but told the badger suit man that he could leave the thumb drive with him. The suspect refused to do that. He then threatened to blow up the building.

The building was evacuated when the suspect set his car on fire prior to entering the building with his thumb drive. He conversed with a security guard for about 45 minutes, where the guard said he was angry with the government. We now know that anger was directed at government space policy, and that the thumb drive didn’t have anything earth-shattering—just some information about the sun, black holes, and other areas of astronomy.

A Baltimore Police sniper shot the suspect, who refused to take his hands out of his pockets and stop upon being ordered by police. With the suspected bomb still strapped to his chest, a robot was sent in to try to get the suspect to show his hands and comply again with police orders. He eventually showed his hands, and the suspect bomb, a combination of wires, tin foil, and candy bars wrapped around a motherboard, was removed from the scene. The suspect was taken to a nearby hospital.

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Fox Baltimore’s Shelley Orman, Joy Lepola, Karen Campbell, Amber Miller, and the rest of the news team gave on the ground reports of this bizarre incident. Lepola interviewed the alleged suspect’s father, who said his son had suffered a mental breakdown. It was also confirmed that the suspect was not wearing a panda suit; it was a badger.

Via Fox Baltimore:

The 25-year-old suspect, who investigators identified as a white male from Howard County, was shot by police after forcing an evacuation of the WBFF-TV news station in north Baltimore with a bomb threat.

The man set his car on fire in the station's parking lot before demanding the station air a story he brought with him on a flash drive. Police couldn't confirm the contents of the flash drive, although the station's security guard said it had to do with government conspiracies.

The man, whose name wasn't released Thursday, then threatened to blow up the building after being denied entry to the station's lobby. The man was wearing a surgical mask, sunglasses and what police described as a "panda outfit onesie" with a hood and a red vest-like device underneath. The building was evacuated after it was believed the device was actually a bomb.

[…]

A team of firefighters extinguished the flames coming out of the suspect's sedan's gas tank, while officers blocked off the street before sending in a negotiator.

The man walked outside and was followed by at least four officers in tactical gear. Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith said the man had his hands in his pockets with a wire leading down his arm from the red device strapped to his chest.

Smith said the man refused to follow the officers' orders to stop and take his hands out of his pockets.

"When you have a non-compliant individual, you have to do what you have to do," Smith said.

A Baltimore police counter sniper fired and struck the man, who went down in the middle of West 41st Street. Several shots were fired, although Smith couldn't confirm exactly how many.

[…]

Several minutes passed and the man was still lying in the middle of the street after being shot. Medics could not tend to his injuries because he refused to take his hands out of his pockets.

"He was described as conscious and alert, just uncooperative," Smith said. "He was saying no when we were asking him to comply."

Eventually, the man complied to police orders and the robot disarmed him of his vest.