msnbc.com and NBC News updated 2 hours 2 minutes ago
SILVER SPRING, Md. — A gunman with a possible explosive device strapped to himself entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Md., Wednesday afternoon and was holding a “small number” of hostages, police said.
Montgomery County police Chief Thomas Manger said hostage negotiators were talking with the man but said he would not reveal the nature of the negotiations. No injuries were known, he said, and he wouldn’t confirm reports that a shot or shots had been fired.
People on the eighth and ninth floors of the building in the close-in suburb of Washington were safely evacuated, as were children in the Discovery Kids Place day care center, police said, adding that nobody was known to have been injured.
Law enforcement authorities told NBC News they believed the man was James Jay Lee or James Jae Lee, 43, a longtime protester at the building who was sentenced to six months of supervised probation for disorderly conduct in March 2008.
